UN chief urges tax on oil giants' profits to fund climate action

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments on Wednesday to tax oil and gas companies' windfall profits to fund climate action, opening a COP31 leaders' summit in Antalya, Turkey, after the UN warned that limiting global warming to 1.5C is no longer achievable. Guterres said science demands fighting harder, not surrendering, and stressed that the overshoot of the 1.5C threshold can be temporary. He noted that nine large oil firms earned about $95 billion in the last quarter, while the UN's loss and damage fund has only received $600 million, equivalent to fossil fuel companies' profits in roughly 14 hours. The summit, running through Thursday, includes leaders from Turkey, the UK, Brazil, and Finland, but the US has no official representation for a second year, and top leaders from China, India, Germany, and Canada are absent.