Crowds gathered to celebrate in front of the White House, and at Times Square and the World Trade Center site in New York.

Earlier this year the House of Representatives voted to erect a "cap-and-trade" system, which would set a ceiling on such emissions and lower it each year.

These house some of the big investment banks, usually foreign-owned, which trade shares, bonds, currencies and derivatives on a scale that would have made an old-school City gent choke on his lunch.