As world leaders gathered in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for the high-level segment of the United Nations climate summit, the head of the United Nations delivered a stark warning and a call to make polluters pay.
"Our planet is heating up. The clock is winding down. It's make or bake time," UN Secretary-General António Guterres told leaders at COP31 on Wednesday, November 11, according to UN News.
Guterres called for a new global climate justice agreement and urged governments to tax fossil fuel companies to fund the countries hit hardest by a crisis they did little to cause. "Polluters must pay," he said, drawing an ovation in the plenary hall.
The climate justice compact
Guterres proposed a "climate justice compact" built around four priorities, according to UN News. The first is accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels while protecting workers and communities and expanding renewable energy. The second is protecting vulnerable populations through early-warning systems, adaptation and faster support after disasters.
The third is delivering affordable climate finance, with wealthy countries meeting their commitments. The fourth is strengthening international cooperation on trade barriers, technology gaps and geopolitical rivalries.
"We cannot demand that countries transform their economies while denying them the means to do so," Guterres said.
The fossil fuel challenge
Guterres was blunt about the fossil fuel industry. "Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs," he said, adding: "The dinosaurs did not have a lobby. Fossil fuels do."
He contrasted the industry's profits with the money available to help vulnerable countries. The nine largest oil companies earned $95 billion in one quarter, while the loss and damage fund, created to help countries cope with climate disasters, has received about $600 million, an amount equal to about 14 hours of those companies' profits, he said.
The warming outlook
The Secretary-General warned that if current national climate plans are fully implemented, the world is heading for more than 2.5°C of warming by the end of the century, according to UN News, far above the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C. He said that breaching 1.5°C does not mean giving up, and that every fraction of a degree avoided matters.
"Science is not telling us to surrender. It is telling us to fight harder," he said.
Leaders' voices
COP31 runs from November 9 to 20, with Türkiye hosting the summit in partnership with Australia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said three decades of climate negotiations had produced strong ideas but weak implementation. "This success at the level of ideas has not produced the same results when it comes to implementation," he said, according to UN News.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose country hosted COP30 in the Amazon city of Belém last year, warned that wars and trade disputes were pushing climate action down the agenda. "We started talking more about weapons and tariffs than the survival of future generations," he said. Lula announced that Brazil will develop national roadmaps to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and end deforestation.
Methane: the emergency brake
The summit also highlighted methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps more than 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over 20 years and is responsible for nearly a third of global warming to date, according to UN News. Guterres asked the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to develop a global standard for near-zero methane emissions from oil and gas operations.
