COP31 Climate Summit Opens in Turkey With Urgent Calls to Speed Up Global Action
World leaders opened the COP31 climate summit in Turkey on Monday with warnings that progress on global warming is falling far behind as climate disasters mount and rival crises compete for attention.
By Hassan Ellis ·
Leaders at the COP31 climate summit pressed governments to step up the fight against global warming as the annual United Nations conference got under way in Turkey on Monday, warning that rising temperatures and a growing toll of climate-driven disasters endanger lives and the world economy.
The opening appeals at the two-week meeting urged nations to keep climate at the top of their agendas even as wars, soaring inflation and the uncertainty surrounding artificial intelligence crowd out attention.
"The urgency of this moment must drive us forward," UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said in prepared remarks for the opening of the event on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, adding that progress so far was "nowhere near fast enough."
A United Nations Environment Program report published in October found the world is already on course to overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, the threshold set at the 2015 Paris climate summit to avert the worst consequences of climate change. A separate UN report released on Monday showed this year is on track to rank among the four hottest on record, driven by a powerful El Niño. The year 2026 has also been marked by extreme heatwaves across Western Europe and a glacier collapse in Nepal that triggered a catastrophic flood, killing more than 1,450 people with thousands still missing.
Turkey's COP31 presidency has centered this year's summit on electrifying more than a third of the global economy by 2035, up from roughly a fifth today, and is asking nations to sign a pledge backing the target. In principle, the goal could cut planet-warming emissions by accelerating the shift away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, furnaces, boilers, cooking stoves and other equipment that emits greenhouse gases.
"We want people to feel the results of climate talks in daily life: in buildings that use less energy, in clean public transport, in energy they can afford and in new jobs," Turkey's COP31 President Murat Kurum said in prepared remarks. Climate advocates, however, have criticized the pledge because it does not require the additional electricity to come from low-carbon sources, setting up an early dispute over whether electrification alone should count as climate progress.
The summit also convenes against the backdrop of war. The Iran war, now in its ninth month, has severely disrupted Middle East oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, lifting fuel prices worldwide and prompting a scramble for new supplies. The conflict, like Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions on Moscow's energy exports that followed, has underscored the world's dependence on fossil fuels, though some argue the wars have also demonstrated the benefits of moving to renewables.
US President Donald Trump's administration, which is shunning climate talks for the second consecutive year, has promoted policies maximizing oil, gas and coal production in response to the Middle East disruptions. South Korea, India, Thailand and other Asian nations have also increased reliance on coal or moved to expand coal-fired power generation. "A lot of people who previously might have been embarrassed to argue for continuing very high use of fossil fuel are now feeling empowered to make that case," said John Holdren of Harvard University, a former science adviser to President Barack Obama.
At the same time, renewable energy deployment has risen, fueled by surging exports of low-cost clean technology from China. Stiell told the summit that renewables are the clear answer to improving energy security. "This year's fossil fuel cost chaos has delivered a global shockwave, hitting households hard and spreading inflation like a cancer," he said, adding that renewable installations had saved the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars.
The rapid rollout of artificial intelligence is further complicating the talks by driving a surge in global power demand and contributing to rising emissions, and Turkey will call on governments, businesses and other institutions to sign a pledge outlining principles for developing and deploying AI sustainably. Chris Bowen, Australia's president of COP31 negotiations, said he hoped the conference would prove multilateralism works. "Paris is working," he said of the 2015 agreement. "But we must move faster."
