PARIS -- World leaders, investment funds and energy magnates promised Tuesday at a summit in Paris to devote new money and technology to slow global warming. French President Emmanuel Macron hopes to rev up the Paris climate accord that U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected.
Trump wasn't invited to the event, but his name was everywhere.
One by one, top world diplomats, former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, business leaders like Michael Bloomberg and even former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that the world will shift to cleaner fuels and reduce emissions regardless of whether the Trump administration pitches in.
Central to Tuesday's summit was countering Trump's main argument that the 2015 Paris accord on reducing global emissions would hurt U.S. business.
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Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker, argues that the big businesses and successful economies of the future will be making and using renewable energy instead of pumping oil.
"The [Paris] agreement is fragile ... we're not moving fast enough," Macron said. "It's time to act and move faster and win this battle" against climate change.
Macron's office announced a dozen international projects emerging from the summit that will inject hundreds of millions of dollars in efforts to curb climate change.
The projects include a program for eight U.S. states to develop electric vehicles, an investment fund for the hurricane-hit Caribbean and money from Bill Gates' foundation to help farmers adapt to climate change.
"The United States did not drop out of the Paris agreement. Donald Trump got Donald Trump out of the Paris agreement," Schwarzenegger said.
The projects also aim to speed up the end of the combustion engine to reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming. With that aim, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced that his agency would stop financing oil and gas projects in two years, except in special circumstances for very poor nations.
The summit, co-hosted by the U.N., the World Bank and Macron, was held on the second anniversary of the Paris climate accord, which was ratified by 170 countries. More than 50 heads of state and government took part.
Activists kept up pressure with a protest in the shadow of the domed Pantheon monument on Paris' Left Bank, calling for an end to all investment in oil, gas and resource mining.
Top officials agreed with them, saying the global financial system isn't shifting fast enough away from carbon emissions, and toward energy and business projects that don't aggravate climate change.
"Financial pledges need to flow faster through [a] more streamlined system and make a difference on the ground," said Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, whose island nation is among those on the front lines of the rising sea levels and extreme storms worsened by human-made emissions.
"We are all in the same canoe," rich countries and poor, he said.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono described ways that Japan is investing in climate monitoring technology and hydrogen energy but said "we have to do more and better."
As the day progressed, announcements started rolling in.
A group of 225 investment funds managing more than $26 trillion in assets promised to pressure companies to curb their greenhouse gas emissions and to disclose climate-related financial information.
The group, which includes the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension fund, said it will focus on 100 of the world's largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters.
Financial institutions at the meeting highlighted the need to ensure that their investments don't suffer from, or contribute to, the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and more extreme weather.
Macron also hosted leading world philanthropists Tuesday morning to encourage more climate-related investment.
Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, said environmentalists owed Trump a debt of "gratitude" for acting as a "rallying cry" for action on climate change. Bloomberg said the private sector coalition called "America's Pledge," which promises to honor the climate goals set in 2015, "now represents half of the U.S. economy."
Kerry said many Americans remain "absolutely committed" to the Paris accord. He said 38 states have legislation pushing renewable energy and 90 major American cities support the Paris accord fighting global warming.
California Gov. Jerry Brown argued against Trump's plans to resurrect coal mining and said "it's time for President Trump to join the rest of the world, not oppose it" on climate change.
In an interview, Brown cited recent wildfires in his state as an example of extreme weather worsened by climate change.
On Monday, Macron awarded 18 climate scientists -- most of them based in the U.S. -- multimillion-euro grants to relocate to France for the rest of Trump's term.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was once called the "climate chancellor" because of her efforts to curb global warming, faced domestic criticism for failing to attend Tuesday's summit.
In the Dutch city of The Hague, experts launched a plan Tuesday aimed at addressing threats created by water and food shortages. It called on the United Nations to create a special "climate security" envoy and urged better coordination on international migration issues.
It also demanded action to counter food shortages in Africa's Lake Chad Basin, security issues in Mali and water management in Iraq.
Information for this article was contributed by Angela Charlton, Sylvie Corbet, Jeffrey Schaeffer, Masha Macpherson and Frank Jordans of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/13/2017