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PARIS — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that he would sell an agreement on tackling climate change to the American people almost entirely as a jobs and economic issue.

“This is the most extraordinary market opportunity in the history of mankind,” Mr. Kerry said at The International New York Times Energy for Tomorrow conference in Paris.

In a conversation with the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, Mr. Kerry said that investing in renewable energy to lower carbon dioxide emissions was a far bigger opportunity than the information technology boom in the United States.

“I think there are millions of jobs to be created in this,” he said, referring to people “who would build and service and profit from this transformation.”

Mr. Kerry pointed out that the climate agreement being negotiated in Paris would not need to go before the United States Congress for debate.

Asked whether he thought putting the deal before Congress would strengthen it, he referred broadly to the gridlock that increasingly paralyzes the Senate, as well as to the rejection by many members of Congress to established climate science that indicates the earth is warming because of the burning of fossil fuels.

“If you were going to have a legitimate debate …” Mr. Kerry said, without elaborating.

Mr. Kerry has been speaking to various groups across Paris this week and engaging in diplomatic efforts to support a climate agreement that he says is crucial for world stability and survival. He made his remarks at the International New York Times conference, which is in its second and final day, to an audience that included a large number of businesspeople.

Mr. Kerry said he expected a new draft of the United Nations agreement — the result of several days of committee meetings and negotiations — to be ready around noon in Paris on Wednesday. Then everyone would be able to see what any potential problems there were, he said.

Mr. Kerry said the market for renewable energy sources and other types of clean energy would “explode” if the right deal was struck in Paris. Repeating a theme he has used recently, he said the energy transformation would be “business-driven,” combined with “consumer demand and voter demand.”

Mr. Kerry also praised China’s participation at the talks. “I think China has already made a huge difference,” he said, particularly in helping to bring many other countries into the process.

“I understand their concerns,” he said. “I hope we can address them.”

His comments were echoed by Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based energy security group, who addressed the conference after Mr. Kerry’s departure.

Mr. Birol said that China, which declared the highest alert for air pollution in Beijing this week, had put in place major efforts to curb CO2 emissions, and that it was now by far the world’s biggest investor in renewable energy like wind and solar power.

“In my view, China doesn’t get the credit it deserves,” Mr. Birol said at the conference.

Mr. Kerry was also asked about diplomatic issues, including developments in Syria and Iran, as well as his views on comments by the Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump to bar foreign Muslims from entering the United States.

At first, Mr. Kerry said only that such remarks made his job and United States diplomatic efforts at large more difficult. “That’s about as diplomatic as I can make it,” he added. “That is not America. That is not our Constitution.”

Later, he came back to the topic, saying that he had long admired a plaque in the Capitol that reads simply, “Tolerance.” The United States, he said, had spent a lot of effort and “a lot of blood” to uphold such ideals.