If you like watching diplomatic paint dry, the UN has a live webcast of 170 delegates (at the latest count) signing the Paris Agreement today in New York. They will also be making speeches, presumably much the same ones they made in Paris.

To my surprise, it looks as if Obama isn’t going. He is good at letting subordinates get the glory, as with Gina McCarthy and the Clean Power Plan. It will be John Kerry, who played a key part in Paris, signing for the USA.

An excuse for an open thread on the Paris Agreement.

The Grauniad makes an intriguing claim that a 2020 date for entry into force was dropped from the negotiating text in Paris by mistake, so allowing an earlier one triggered only by a minimum of ratifications. A likely story. Cockups do happen, sometimes on important things. But do Laurent Fabius, his team of 60 aides presumably not picked from the bottom half of the ENA graduating class, and Christina Figueres look accident-prone Trey Gowdys to you? I think somebody realized that a date condition is unnecessary and unusual, and decided to drop it to see if anybody complained. Nobody did.

Update
A marvellous photo of John Kerry signing the agreement on behalf of the USA - and his granddaughter. Credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images, via the Guardian. If Getty sues we’ll take it down ..