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By Gregg Zoroya, USA Today—

Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday the historic Paris accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gases to slow global warming will transform world economies by encouraging corporations to invest trillions of dollars on clean energy over the next three to four decades.

It “sends a very powerful message to the global marketplace,” Kerry said on NBC’s Meet the Press.  “There are jobs to be created, money to be made.”

Even as supporters from Manila to Michigan celebrated the deal, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,  said it would have the opposite effect: killing jobs and raising energy costs. He said the accord reached Saturday could be spurned if a Republican wins the presidency next year.

Kerry, who led U.S. negotiations to reach the Paris agreement, appeared on several talk shows Sunday highlighting elements of the accord, including mandatory requirements for nations to report their progress in meeting carbon-reducing goals.

One of the most important successes, he said, was the global message to the business community about the need to develop renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions, mainly from coal and oil, that cause planet warming.

“The result will be a very clear signal to the marketplace of the world that people are moving into low-carbon, no-carbon, alternative, renewable energy, and I think it’s going to create millions of jobs, enormous investments into R&D, and that R&D is going to create the solutions — not government,” Kerry said on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

“It’s American ingenuity and creativity that is really going to solve this problem,” he said on CBS’ Face the Nation.

The agreement by 195 nations seeks to limit rising temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius — 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — compared with preindustrial levels through the year 2100. Industrialized nations pledged $100 billion a year through 2020 to help poor countries impacted by climate change.

Saturday, President Obama declared the Paris climate agreement “a turning point for the world.”

McConnell said in a statement released Sunday that Obama “is making promises he can’t keep, writing checks he can’t cash and stepping over the middle class to take credit for an ‘agreement’ that is subject to being shredded in 13 months.”

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., a leading critic of the broad scientific consensus that blames human-caused greenhouse gases for global warming, said Obama will use the agreement to establish emission targets for every sector of the U.S. economy, the Associated Press reported.