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Climate Change remains a generational crisis, requiring urgent action from individuals, organizations and governments.
COP31, the 31st United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference, is taking place at Antalya, Türkiye, on November 9-20, 2026. The COP Climate conferences mean to encourage and monitor action, consistently with binding goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement and other international accords.
COP31 includes, as it is common, a two-day leaders’ summit. This year the summit is being attended by 102 world leaders, down from 156 three years ago. By contrast, the 92,000 people registered make COP31 the largest climate conference in history.
These numbers might be interpreted as one more indication that governments are not being as responsive to climate change as people would like them to be. However, people elect governments, at least in democratic countries. Hence, we all share the burden of governmental insufficiencies on climate action.
Three mandated pre-conference UN reports “show governments increasingly taking whole-of-economy, whole-of-society approaches to climate policy-making.” This is positive and important. However, the reports also, once again, “show [that] overall progress remains substantially insufficient, and highlight key barriers to further acceleration and implementation of national targets and pledges.”
In fact, the world has already failed to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit rising global temperatures to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels, the threshold beyond which science says the dangers of global warming grow considerably. Those dangers include—as we are all increasingly aware of—extreme events such as worsening storms and floods, fiercer wildfires and droughts, and even ecosystem collapses.
António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, warned at COP31 that the planet is on a “path to mutually assured destruction” because “[f]ossil fuel interests keep making a killing while killing our planet.” This does not mean that climate action is hopeless. But it does mean that it is now harder–and will be excruciatingly harder as time goes by—to meaningfully protect our planet. In a speech worth listening to, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva stated that climate change mostly disappeared from the global stage over the past two years, but also offered the example of his country’s actions as an element of hope.
The US has historically been a major producer of climate-change-inducing emissions. But we were once, in the recent past, a leader in climate change research, awareness and mitigation. To our national shame, we have no official presence at COP31. This is because the Trump administration officially withdrew us from the International Climate Framework and the Paris Agreement—consistently with Mr. Trump’s inexcusable and profoundly damaging denialism of climate change.
We do have an unofficial delegation, which was denied standard State Department travel assistance. Members include former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry—both outspoken champions for climate change action—, roughly 20 Democratic members of Congress, and state and local leaders.
Official re-engagement of the US in climate action planning and implementation is a national imperative. For the health of the planet and for future generations, for sure. But also, in our own self-interest. The exacerbated natural hazards caused by climate change are soon going to be prohibitively costly. And green energy is not an economic burden, but rather a major opportunity and market. Our industry and private capital understand this and have been investing heavily on green energy. But this administration’s disastrous pushbacks—in favor of far less desirable fossil fuel options—puts the US in competitive disadvantage relative to China and other world economies.
Such official re-engagement should be a priority for the Congress we just elected. But we, the voters, also have a key role to play in 2028: We must re-elect a Congress and elect a president who understand the challenges and opportunities of climate action. Only the combined efforts of both branches of government will bring success.
— Antonio Baptista
Note: The progress of COP31 can be followed in depth at https://unfccc.int. Or it can be followed through press highlights. Here is an example of meaningful coverage, from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/11/climate/cop31-antonio-guterres-un.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PlE.H6n2.KlV9u2HbKf_U&smid=url-share.
