United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has used his final climate address before leaving office to warn world leaders that the COP31 summit opening in Türkiye on Monday is a "moment of truth" for the fight against global warming — and to admit that scientists told him last year the Paris Agreement's 1.5C goal can no longer be described as attainable.
In an exclusive interview with the Associated Press from his 38th-floor conference room at UN headquarters in New York, Guterres used the phrase "moment of truth" three times in 20 minutes. His second and final term as secretary-general expires at the end of the year, making the Antalya summit, which runs from November 9 to 20, his last climate conference in the job.
"This is a moment of truths. We can no longer wait, we can no longer have endless discussions in which everybody tries to push the responsibility to someone else. Everybody must do more, everybody must do more now," Guterres said he will tell leaders at the conference, known as COP31.
A final sermon from the UN's top floor
Guterres has delivered variations of his climate warning for most of the past decade, often in increasingly stark language. Three years ago he declared that "the era of global boiling has arrived", referring to rising temperatures and worsening extreme weather. But this time, the Associated Press reported, the sense of urgency is palpable — in a world of killer heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts, compounded by El Niño, the naturally occurring climate pattern that scrambles weather systems around the globe.
He discussed his one last push in the fight against climate change and a ten-year tenure in which he became one of the most visible advocates urging often reluctant countries to reduce their emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Former US Vice President Al Gore, who has worked alongside Guterres on climate for years, told AP that the secretary-general "has consistently been eloquent, forceful and right on target in all of his many statements and initiatives to address the climate crisis", adding that he understands "clearly that it is the greatest challenge facing humanity".
The day the 1.5C goal slipped away
The most striking passage of the interview concerned Guterres's own reckoning with the science. He recalled what he called "one of the most difficult days of my life": last year, preparing a major climate speech, he planned as he had for nine years to insist that the 2015 Paris Agreement's main goal — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — was still alive.
"Scientists told me you cannot say that because that's no longer true. That was an enormous shock for me."
Too much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the result of burning fossil fuels, had already been released into the atmosphere, the scientists told him. The UN's task now, he said, is to limit how far past that threshold the world heads.
"It felt like a failure," Guterres said. "But it's not the world that's failed, it's the political leadership that's failed."
Protecting the planet, he argued, requires a long-term strategic view — yet in many political systems "there is no strategic view. And policies change frequently, not allowing the kind of constant determined investment that is necessary."
The science behind the warning: a UN Environment Programme report released in October found that fully implementing current national climate commitments would still put the world on course for about 2.6 degrees Celsius of warming this century. The UN warned in September that temperatures were on course to exceed 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. An exceptionally strong El Niño is forecast to peak later this year and could make 2026 or 2027 the hottest year on record.
What is on the table in Antalya
The 31st UN Climate Change Conference opens on Monday in Antalya, a Mediterranean resort city in southern Türkiye, and runs through November 20. More than 100,000 people are expected to attend, according to AFP, though tensions over geopolitics, finance and fossil fuels are tempering hopes of a breakthrough.
Türkiye presides over the conference, while Australia leads the negotiations under an unusual arrangement that settled a dispute over who would host. COP31 President Murat Kurum, Türkiye's environment minister, has said the conference aims to turn past COPs' commitments into real results. Officials have called it an "implementation COP", though Australia's Climate Minister Chris Bowen has warned that reaching consensus among nearly 200 countries "will not be easy".
| What | When / who |
|---|---|
| COP31 opens | Monday, November 9, Antalya |
| Leaders' summit | November 11–12 |
| Leaders confirmed | 85 world leaders; nearly 300 ministers expected |
| Opening remarks | President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Secretary-General Guterres, Australian PM Anthony Albanese |
| Conference ends | Friday, November 20 |
A leaders' summit takes place on November 11–12, on the conference's third and fourth days. A US congressional delegation will attend, but the Trump administration is not taking part in the negotiations.
The centrepiece of the Turkish presidency's agenda is an electrification drive to raise the share of global energy demand met by electricity from around 20 percent today to 35 percent by 2035. Türkiye and Australia want the goal written into the cover decision, the overarching political statement negotiated by consensus. The European Union has called for "clean" electrification, a term that could prompt debate over the role of fossil fuels.
The fault lines
Two familiar divides are expected to dominate the talks. Countries committed at COP28 in 2023 to transition away from fossil fuels, but have struggled to turn the pledge into action. The COP30 deal last year made no explicit mention of fossil fuels after oil-producing countries objected, and Brazil instead produced a voluntary roadmap. Observers say Türkiye and Australia want to avoid a repeat.
Finance is the second fault line. African negotiators want a pledge to triple adaptation finance added to the agenda, while budget-strapped developed countries are reluctant to commit more money. Existing mechanisms, including the Green Climate Fund, fall short of the investment needed, according to Martin Krause of the UN Environment Programme. An energy crisis fuelled by the war in the Middle East also weighs on the talks.
Guterres used the interview to argue that the money exists — in the wrong place. "Fossil fuel companies are making huge profits and obviously those windfall profits should be taxed and those taxes should be applied in supporting the countries that are having the more dramatic impacts of climate change," he said.
Expectations are low: Paul Watkinson, France's former chief negotiator at climate summits, told reporters: "This is not going to be the COP that changes the world." With the US administration absent from the negotiations and finance talks deadlocked, a breakthrough in Antalya is not expected — the test is whether the summit can keep the process moving at all.
A decade of warnings, up close
Guterres's urgency, he told AP, was shaped by what he has seen first-hand. Three years ago he toured the highest peaks of Nepal, warning of a future with swollen glacier-fed lakes bursting and devastating floods and landslides. "I am here today to cry out from the rooftop of the world: Stop the madness," he said in 2023. "The glaciers are retreating, but we cannot. We must end the fossil fuel age."
"Unfortunately they came sooner than what I expected," he recalled. Floods in August killed more than 1,400 people, with another 5,600 missing. Scientists said climate change played a role in the disasters.
Earlier this month he spoke by video link with scientists aboard a ship frozen into the Arctic ice, part of the Tara Polaris I expedition studying an ocean warming three to four times faster than the global average. Asked what message he should take to world leaders, the expedition's chief scientist, Maxime Geoffroy, told him: "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic." Guterres said the conversations created "a sense of fury in relation to those who go on, if not denying, at least refusing to take the measures that are necessary to stop this madness." Yet he also pointed to one source of hope: a worldwide boom in wind and solar power as cheaper alternatives to fossil fuels.
He also warned that new threats are compounding the old ones. With wars raging in Ukraine and Iran, and worries about artificial intelligence — which he has also tried to rally world leaders around — "the problem is that all these things are getting combined," he said, noting the huge electricity and water consumption and carbon emissions of AI. War-related energy shocks, he added, show that relying on fossil fuels is a fundamental security problem.
"Tell the truth"
Guterres was candid about the limits of his office. Because nations do not have to do what the UN or its leaders ask, and superpowers hold veto authority, he said his position as secretary-general "has no real power. We have not much money you know. But there is one thing we have: A voice."
That is why he has three words of advice for whoever succeeds him: "Tell the truth." The UN Security Council is still deciding on the next secretary-general.
"Take it seriously because it is an existential threat. And the first thing we need to fight is for our own lives."
That, he said, is the one message he wants the public to remember on climate change.
Frequently asked questions
When does COP31 start?
It opens on Monday, November 9, in Antalya, Türkiye, and runs through November 20. A leaders' summit takes place on November 11–12.
What does Guterres mean by a "moment of truth"?
He means the talks can no longer be deferred or diluted: every country must do more, now, rather than shifting responsibility to others. It is his final climate message as secretary-general, with his term ending this year.
Is the 1.5C goal dead?
Not formally abandoned — but Guterres says scientists told him last year he could no longer claim it was still attainable. The UN's aim now is to limit how far warming overshoots the threshold. Current national commitments point to about 2.6C of warming this century, according to UNEP.
What is the main thing to watch?
Whether the electrification target — raising electricity's share of global energy demand from about 20 percent to 35 percent by 2035 — makes it into the final cover decision, and whether finance and fossil-fuel language survive the talks. A US congressional delegation will attend, but the Trump administration is not participating in the negotiations.
Key takeaways
- António Guterres calls COP31, opening Monday in Antalya, a "moment of truth" in his final climate address as UN secretary-general.
- He revealed scientists told him last year that the Paris Agreement's 1.5C goal can no longer be described as attainable; the aim now is to limit the overshoot.
- Current national commitments point to about 2.6C of warming this century, according to a UNEP report from October.
- The summit's centrepiece is an electrification drive — 20 percent of energy demand today to 35 percent by 2035 — with fossil-fuel and finance disputes unresolved.
- Guterres's advice to his successor: "Tell the truth."
COP31 opens on Monday with Guterres, President Erdoğan and Prime Minister Albanese giving opening remarks. The leaders' summit on November 11–12 will be the first test of whether his final warning lands — and whether a conference billed as an "implementation COP" can produce anything more than another round of promises. The UN Security Council, meanwhile, continues its search for the person who will inherit the voice Guterres says is the secretary-general's only real power.
