UNITED NATIONS, United States, Sept 23, 2026 (AFP) –
Fresh from accusing fossil fuel interests of treating the atmosphere like an “open sewer,” outgoing UN chief Antonio Guterres is set to host his final climate summit Wednesday at the world organization’s New York headquarters.
The stakes are clearer than ever, as the impacts of climate change surge around the world — from heat waves and wildfires in Europe to catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet triggered by a glacier collapse.
Extreme weather impacts are set to worsen with an El Nino weather pattern that has tied for the most intense ever.
And the world is set to shoot past — at least temporarily — 1.5C of warming, beyond which scientists say it will see worse catastrophes from climate change.
The “High-level Event on Climate Action and the Just Transition” will have opening remarks by Guterres followed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The two countries are co-hosting COP31 climate talks in Antalya in November in an unusual arrangement, with Australia running the talks but Turkey hosting the event and rallying support for voluntary pledges.
Guterres, who made climate change a defining issue of his tenure that ends on December 31, set the tone on Tuesday when he called out “Big Oil” for treating the atmosphere like an “open sewer.”
“Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, five major Western oil companies have pocketed nearly half a trillion dollars in profits,” he continued.
He compared the amount with the just $34 billion in financing that has been mobilized to help developing countries adapt to a warming world.
“Guterres is an extraordinary climate champion,” Rachel Cleetus of the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists told AFP.
She praised the former Portuguese prime minister for using his position “to elevate the voices of the less powerful and highlight the need for climate justice.”
– Emissions cuts, financing, electrification –
The meeting agenda calls on leaders to focus on areas like accelerating action to green their economies and mobilizing financing for developing countries to help them achieve their carbon goals and build resilience against a warming world.
Momentum is also gathering for electrification: switching combustion-based systems, like in heating and vehicles, to electricity.
Turkey has advanced a “35×35” target to increase electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35 percent by 2035. However, it has not specified that the electricity should be generated by renewables, which is key to tackling climate change.
There are some glimmers of hope, as global renewable power capacity grew by a record amount last year. But as energy demand increases from AI data centers and air conditioning in a warming world, clean energy is not rising fast enough to displace fossil fuels.
Observers will be watching the level of ambition the two hosts — both fossil fuel-dependent economies — bring in the run-up to COP31.
“We need to come together to meet the problem head-on. There’s no avoiding the scale of our responsibility or the cost of inaction,” Albanese said at the start of the week, extolling his nation’s rising share of renewables in its energy mix.
Yet his climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen is traveling to India and Saudi Arabia this week for talks on strengthening Australia’s oil supplies.
Pledges for Nepal — where thousands remain missing — could also feature.
Nepalese Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal recently told Kantipur TV that financial support “is not a matter of charity; it is a matter of legal and moral liability” for his climate-vulnerable country, which produces negligible emissions.
Cleetus said the response for Nepal would be a credibility test for the Loss and Damage Fund, created to help the nations most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change, but so far vastly underfinanced.
