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The slow international response to climate change has placed the world on a path to destruction, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told heads of state and government at this year’s COP31 climate conference.
“The brutal truth is that the climate crisis is outrunning us,” he said, as world leaders gathered in the Turkish resort city of Antalya to set the tone for negotiations at the UN climate summit.
A UN report last month found the world will cross a temperature threshold countries agreed to pursue in order to prevent runaway global heating. While states like Germany are slipping down the rankings for climate action, according to the annual Climate Change Performance Index published Wednesday by New Climate Institute and Germanwatch.
Nonetheless, Guterres said the world has “the power to make sure the overshoot is a temporary breach.”
Extreme heat, glacier collapse killed thousands
Negotiators from close to 200 countries are meeting in Turkey at the end of a year characterized by extreme heat waves and a glacier collapse in Nepal that triggered a flood, killing more than 1,400 people and left thousands more missing.
At this year’s talks, national representatives will hash out climate solutions such as increasing the share of electricity in an effort to move away from fossil fuels.
The US, the world’s largest historical emitter of damaging greenhouse gases, is not attending the climate conference — for the second year in a row after US President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement in 2025.
Other nations, including Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan, also opted not to send their top leaders to the talks.
A question of implementing promised climate action
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is hosting COP31 together with Australia, which is leading negotiations, called on developed nations to take greater responsibility on climate finance.
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Financing disagreements center around who should pay for international climate action, whether funding should take the form of grants or loans and how to scale monetary support for developing nations.
A major test at COP31 will be whether developed countries can make tangible progress toward delivering on a commitment to raise at least $300 billion annually in climate finance for developing states by 2035.
Erdogan said while previous conferences had resulted in different ideas around financing, they have yet to be turned into action. “We set out to make this an implementation COP,” he told leaders.
“We have no other sky, no other Earth, no other seas or oceans or forests. But today, humanity, driven by greed for excessive consumption, is going through one of the deepest, worst crises in humanity.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addressed remarks that developed nations are not contributing enough to climate finance, saying that the transition away from fossil fuels is in “our common interest.”
“Europe is the world’s largest provider of climate finance. Last year alone, we contributed more than €32 billion [about $35.5 billion] to support developing countries,” she said, adding that Europe will continue to support partners worldwide with the transition to clean energy.
‘Critical decade’ for clean energy tech, electrification
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke of a “solemn responsibility to this and to future generations to act,” adding that this is the critical decade.
Australia, the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, has vowed to promote the views of the “Pacific family” — small Pacific nations in the region such as Tuvalu or Fiji, where pre-COP meetings were held in October.
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Albanese said it was crucial that climate cooperation delivered practical results, turning ambition into implementation — “unlocking investment in clean energy technologies, accelerating electrification, speeding up action for our oceans, unlocking climate finance for those who need it most.”
As reasons to speed up electrification von der Leyen pointed to one of the Europe’s worst wildfire seasons on record and floods in Nepal as well as droughts stretching from Central America to Sudan, and to the disruption to energy supplies linked to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The world is witnessing the cost of continuing with the status quo for our climate and our energy security,” she said, adding that the European Union would double down on efforts to become climate neutral and that she supported COP31’s 35×35 electrification pledge.
The pledge aims to increase electricity’s share of final global energy use to 35% by 2035, with von der Leyen saying Europe would be the first “electro-powered” continent.
Talk about wars, inflation instead of climate catastrophe
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who hosted last year’s COP in the Amazonian city of Belem, said the momentum for climate action had dropped off at the start of the year.
“We started talking more about weapons and tariffs than the survival of future generations,” he said.
He also warned that “climate agreements are the favorite targets of reactionary forces at COPs,” adding that “the lack of consensus cannot become a hurdle for advancement. In times of polarization diplomacy needs to open windows where doors have been closed.”
Lula promised to protect the Amazon rainforest and urged leaders to work together. “Brazil is back to defend the continuity of a healthy planet,” he said.
