Wars and trade disputes should not be allowed to distract the world from its struggle to combat global warming, the leaders of Brazil and Turkey told the COP31 climate conference on Wednesday (November 11, 2026).
The comments on the third day of the annual UN summit came at the start of back-to-back speeches by world leaders that are meant to pave the way for negotiators to find a fresh deal to advance the international fight against climate change. “A year ago, the planet left COP30 invigorated… (but) this momentum has dropped off at the start of this year. Those dynamics have pushed global warming down the list of urgent priorities for some governments, even as climate advocates argue they make the perfect case for a more rapid adoption of clean energy alternatives to oil. “The brutal truth is that the climate crisis is outrunning us. This is the path to mutually assured destruction,” Mr.
Climate change disappeared from the speeches and documents from global leadership,” Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose country hosted last year’s conference, told the summit. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders earlier in the day that the slow international response to climate change so far had placed the world on a path to destruction, and that fast action was needed to avert it. Guterres said, pointing to rising emissions, global temperatures and worsening climate-driven disasters.
A UN report last month found the world on course to break through the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit that countries had agreed to pursue under the Paris Agreement to prevent the worst effects of climate change.
