From November 30 to December 11, 2015, France played host to representatives from 196 countries at a climate change conference sponsored by the United Nations. It was characterized as the most significant and most ambitious such meeting ever held. The goal of the conference was to create a binding, universal agreement that would commit the signatory nations to reducing greenhouse gas emissions—specifically, to limit those emissions to amounts that would prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees centigrade, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above the benchmark level at the start of the Industrial Revolution, when pollutants began to be released into the atmosphere in large and increasing amounts. The treaty was intended to replace the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.