UN Secretary-General António Guterres used his final press conference of the COP31 climate summit in Antalya on Friday to deliver the starkest assessment yet of where the world’s climate pledges are heading. An overshoot of the 1.5-degree warming limit, he said, is no longer a risk to be avoided. It has become a certainty to be managed.
“An overshoot of 1.5 degrees is now inevitable,” Guterres said. “And our responsibility is to keep it as small as possible, for as short a time as possible, and bring temperatures back below 1.5 degrees as quickly as we can.” That, he said, requires immediate and drastic emissions cuts of about 6% every year over the next few years.
Judged against what governments have actually promised, the trajectory is far worse. “On the basis of current commitments of national determined contributions, the country’s climate plans, we are heading for an overshoot as far as the eye can see, with temperatures about 2.5 degrees by the end of the century,” he said. “And that is a recipe for catastrophe.”
Guterres also turned his fire on the fossil fuel industry, accusing its lobby of working to mislead the public and policymakers and to slow the energy transition, and he urged governments not to let it dictate the pace of change. He closed with an appeal to delegates and the public: face the facts, follow the science, choose the future and never give up.
The warning caps a summit week in which Guterres has repeatedly pressed governments to treat the overshoot as a call for faster action rather than surrender. Addressing world leaders at the summit on Wednesday, he said continued dependence on fossil fuels amounted to mutually assured destruction and argued that the cost of renewable energy has fallen below fossil fuels for good. Friday’s press conference, his last of the summit, was blunter still: the 1.5-degree goal can no longer be held without a temporary breach, and closing that breach quickly is now the central task.
COP31 is being hosted by Türkiye in Antalya, with Australia’s Chris Bowen serving as President of Negotiations under the partnership arrangement between the two countries.
Video: UN Climate Change
