COP31 leaders try out new sales pitch for climate action: Do it for the economy

FAMILY PHOTO. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pose for a family photo with other leaders during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya, Turkey, on November 11, 2026.

Murad Sezer/Reuters

John Kerry, a former US secretary of state who has been advocating for climate action for decades, says he likes the reframing of the issue

AT A GLANCE

• Leaders at the COP31 summit are promoting climate action as a means to boost the economy and reduce living costs, addressing the urgent concerns of inflation and energy security.
• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres emphasized the vulnerability of countries dependent on fossil fuel imports and advocated for a transition to renewable energy to mitigate economic instability.

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ANTALYA, Turkey – Leaders at the COP31 summit in Turkey are trying out a new sales pitch for climate action that is tailored to the times: do it to bolster the economy and bring down the cost of living.

The message, being repeated in the hallways and on the plenary stage of the annual UN conference, reflects efforts by organizers to capture the attention of governments wrestling with crises that have pushed global warming down the list of priorities.

Among those is rampant inflation driven in part by disruptions to Middle East crude oil shipments since the onset of the Iran war. Consumer price pressures from fuel to food were a major driver in the US midterm elections that handed control of Congress to Democrats, and are an important vulnerability for leaders across Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

“Three-quarters of humanity live in countries that import fossil fuels, hostage to price shocks they did not create and cannot control,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders attending the summit on Wednesday, November 11.

“Recent conflicts make clear that this is a recipe for chronic insecurity and a cost-of-living meltdown,” he added, saying the clear solution is a shift to renewable energy.

Simon Stiell, head of the UN’s climate office, made the same point. “Today, chaos in global energy markets and climate disasters are supercharging inflation, slamming government budgets, pushing household bills up and living standards down,” he told the conference.

“The political costs of fossil fuel dependency are unforgiving. Climate action can help relieve the pressures.”

John Kerry, a former US secretary of state who has been advocating for climate action for decades, said he liked the reframing of the issue.

Climate change has become a massively divisive political issue in recent years, including in the US, where President Donald Trump last year withdrew the world’s top historical greenhouse gas emitter from international climate cooperation after calling warming a hoax.

“I think everybody who is working on climate needs to change the way they talk about it,” Kerry told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.

“I think that grouping of security, health, jobs, stability of communities and food supply are all very real and very much on people’s minds when I talk to them.”

European energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen said the approach could help build a consensus for action that could even include climate skeptics.

“Because even if you don’t believe in climate change, which I obviously do, we should be able to agree that moving away from a dependency on fossils is extremely smart for security reasons,” he said. – Rappler.com