Nov. 11 — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a forceful call for a global windfall tax on the excess profits of major oil and gas corporations, demanding that the revenues be channeled directly toward climate recovery and loss-and-damage relief for the world’s most vulnerable nations.
Delivering his keynote address at the high-level World Leaders Summit during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya, Türkiye, on Tuesday, Guterres urged governments to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy systems.
Highlighting the stark disparity between record energy-sector earnings and inadequate funding for climate-vulnerable states, the UN chief asserted that industries directly responsible for driving climate disruption must shoulder the financial burden of recovery.
“Polluters must pay,” Guterres declared, advocating for targeted levies on excess fossil fuel revenues to fund climate resilience and disaster relief in developing economies.
Guterres warned that international action remains dangerously outpaced by the accelerating trajectory of global warming, noting that continued reliance on oil, gas, and coal will precipitate irreversible planetary damage. Taking direct aim at the political and financial influence of the fossil fuel sector, he noted that the economic case for hydrocarbons is steadily eroding even as entrenched corporate lobbying obstructs global climate agreements.
“The dinosaurs didn’t have a lobbying industry—fossil fuels do,” Guterres remarked in a pointed critique of industry resistance.
Expressing grave concern over the international benchmark of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Guterres cautioned that a temporary overshoot of the threshold appears increasingly imminent. However, he maintained that the ultimate magnitude and duration of any temperature breach still depend on immediate, decisive policy choices by world leaders to slash carbon emissions.
To stabilize global trajectories, the Secretary-General outlined a concrete clean-energy roadmap ahead of 2035:
Tripling Renewables: Expand global renewable energy generation capacity at least threefold by 2035, capitalizing on solar power’s position as the cheapest source of new electricity across most regions.
Fossil Fuel Phase-Down: Systematically scale back coal-fired power generation, curb oil and gas consumption, halt all construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure, and enforce strict controls on methane emissions.
Guterres also underscored the economic vulnerabilities facing energy-importing nations, pointing out that nearly three-quarters of the global population resides in countries reliant on imported hydrocarbons. Price volatility and supply disruptions in international energy markets directly destabilize national economies and household living standards—making the shift to clean energy an imperative for national economic and energy security as much as environmental protection.
Concluding his address, Guterres pressed wealthy nations to fulfill and expand climate finance commitments for the developing world, calling for the timely delivery of at least $300 billion annually in climate financing by 2035 alongside substantially increased allocations for climate adaptation.
Source: United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) Official Proceedings & Office of the UN Secretary-General, Antalya