UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned world leaders at the COP31 climate summit in Turkey on Wednesday that the climate crisis is outpacing the world’s response, telling them the planet is on “the path to mutually assured destruction” unless governments act far faster.
Speaking in Antalya at the start of two days of leaders’ speeches, Guterres pointed to record emissions in 2025, shattering heat records and climate disasters striking lives and economies across the globe. “The brutal truth is that the climate crisis is outrunning us,” he said. “But science is not telling us to surrender. It is telling us to fight harder.”
He singled out fossil fuels, saying they “must go the way of the dinosaurs” — and warning that, unlike the dinosaurs, the fossil fuel industry has a powerful lobby working to delay action. A UN report last month found the world on course to breach the 1.5°C warming limit agreed under the Paris Agreement.
The leaders of Brazil and Turkey echoed the warning, arguing that wars and trade disputes must not be allowed to push climate action down the agenda. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose country hosted last year’s COP30, said momentum from that summit had faded this year. “We started talking more about weapons and tariffs than the survival of future generations,” he said. “The planet cannot be at the mercy of hegemonic struggles.”
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan said wars, crises, migration, famine and poverty only increased the need for international solidarity. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are seeking agreement in Antalya on a Turkish proposal to raise electricity’s share of global energy use and revive stalled efforts to move away from fossil fuels.
The summit opened against a difficult backdrop: the US and Israeli war on Iran this year has disrupted Middle Eastern oil shipments and pushed fuel prices higher, while the United States has stayed away from the talks for a second year after President Donald Trump withdrew the country from climate cooperation. Several other G7 leaders, including those of France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada, also did not travel to Antalya.
Former French prime minister Laurent Fabius, who presided over the 2015 Paris conference, said the leaders’ speeches should give political impetus to the negotiations, with implementation the key word in Antalya. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng and Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine are among the speakers scheduled for Wednesday.
Sources: Reuters, “War, conflict must not distract from climate action, leaders warn COP31”, by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Valerie Volcovici, 11 November 2026 — https://www.tbsnews.net/world/war-conflict-must-not-distract-climate-action-leaders-warn-cop31-1599571
