The Climate Crisis Is Outrunning Us": Guterres Doesn't Hold Back at COP31

World leaders began arriving at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, this week, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened the summit's high-level session with one of his sharpest speeches yet. His blunt summary: the climate crisis is outrunning us. He said fossil fuels must "go the way of the dinosaurs," accused the fossil fuel lobby of stalling action, and warned that the current path leads to mutually assured destruction.

The backdrop gives him plenty of ammunition. Emissions hit a record high in 2025, the past four years were the hottest on record, and a UN report last month found the world on course to blow past the 1.5C warming limit. This year alone has seen disasters like a glacier collapse in Nepal that triggered a flash flood killing more than 1,500 people.

Turkey, which is hosting the talks running November 9 to 20, is pushing a voluntary electrification plan aimed at getting electricity to 35% of global energy use by 2035, up from a little over a fifth today, across transport, buildings and industry. Critics point out that the draft doesn't say the new power has to be clean, and the EU wants that spelt out.

The guest list says a lot, too. Leaders including Turkey's Erdogan, Brazil's Lula, Qatar's Emir, Iran's President Pezeshkian and Pakistan's Prime Minister were in Antalya, along with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and China's Vice President Han Zheng. But the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan skipped it, and the United States stayed away for a second straight year. As former French PM Laurent Fabius put it, the key word this time is implementation.