ESSAY: London Climate Action Week — the UN between fossil fuels, AI and the Iran crisis

ESSAY: London Climate Action Week — the UN between fossil fuels, AI and the Iran crisis

Introduction: Guterres in London in a city scorched by heat

June 23, 2026: a speech in the furnace

When United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the London Climate Action Week on June 23, 2026, he spoke beneath a heat wave threatening to break records in the British capital. This was not a calculated dramatic device — it was the climate reality of 2026. A lethal heat dome was crossing Europe as the leader of the world's most universal international organization called, once again, to turn the page definitively on fossil fuels.

Guterres did not mince words: "These crises may seem separate, but they share the same destructive root cause: fossil fuels. And they call for the same response: a fast and fair transition to clean energy." The world faces, in his view, "a tale of two crises": a climate crisis pushing us toward higher temperatures and catastrophic tipping points, and an energy crisis exposing the folly of a world addicted to hydrocarbons.

The Iran war as a brutal revelation

What gave particular acuity to Guterres's speech in London was that it unfolded in the context of a conflict in Iran — involving the United States, Israel and Tehran — which had provoked what the Secretary-General called "the mother of all energy shocks," comparable, in his view, to the oil shocks of the 1970s and to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces had severely disrupted shipping and sent global energy prices soaring.

Guterres's argument was simple and devastating: the Iran crisis proves that fossil dependence is not only a climate problem — it is a problem of national security and strategic independence. A preliminary agreement between Washington and Tehran had been described as a "60-day pause" to allow talks in Switzerland, but the fragility of that situation illustrated precisely the danger of leaving the world's economies at the mercy of a single supply corridor.

Two crises, one origin: Guterres's diagnosis

Global warming has now surpassed the 1.5°C threshold

Guterres was unambiguous about the state of the global climate system: "The climate crisis is accelerating, and we are now on track to breach the 1.5°C limit in the coming years." That statement, delivered in the context of a real European heat wave, was no longer a theoretical projection — it was an observation. Global emissions have not peaked. The G20 countries, responsible for approximately 80 percent of global emissions, have not yet aligned their nationally determined contributions with the necessary trajectory.

The task now, according to Guterres, is no longer simply to prevent breaching the 1.5°C threshold — it is to "strictly limit the overshoot, shorten its duration, and bring temperatures back below 1.5°C as quickly as possible." A subtle but significant reformulation: we accept that overshoot is likely, and we focus on minimizing its effects. This is a form of collective climate grief, accompanied by a call for resilience.

Fossil fuels as the source of global energy insecurity

Guterres's central argument — that fossil dependence is the common root of both the climate crisis AND energy insecurity — is intellectually coherent but politically explosive. It implies that countries maintaining their oil dependence are not merely doing something bad for the climate: they are deliberately compromising their own national security by remaining vulnerable to supply shocks, geopolitical manipulation and market volatility.

The demonstration is convincing: Europe's dependence on Russian gas revealed in 2022 the geopolitical price of that dependence. The world's dependence on Gulf oil is learning the same lesson in 2026 with the Iran crisis. Renewable energy — solar, wind, hydroelectric — depends on no maritime corridor, no strait, no decision by Moscow or Tehran. That is an argument of national security at least as much as a climate argument.

The seven-step plan: an ambitious program for a reluctant world

Emissions, renewables, methane: the three urgencies

Guterres articulated a seven-step plan to accelerate the energy transition. The first three constitute the hard core of urgent climate action. First, emissions must peak now and fall sharply this decade to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 — with a particular call to G20 countries. Second, renewable energy must be accelerated and public subsidies to new fossil fuel projects eliminated. The eight largest fossil fuel companies declared they had generated $6.5 billion in additional profits in the first quarter of this year alone — Guterres calls on governments to tax them.

Third — and this is perhaps the most physically urgent priority — methane must be treated as "the super super-pollutant." Methane is responsible for roughly one-third of current climate warming, but its atmospheric lifespan is ten to twenty years — compared to centuries for CO₂. This means reducing methane emissions now will produce measurable climate effects within years, not decades. The International Energy Agency estimates that about 70 percent of methane from oil and gas can be eliminated with existing technologies at low or zero net cost.

Steps 4 to 7: climate justice, resilience and financing

The last four steps of Guterres's plan address the systemic dimensions of the transition: ensuring that the shift to clean energy creates jobs, supports communities, and benefits developing countries (step 4); protecting the populations most vulnerable to climate impacts by increasing investments in adaptation, early warning systems and resilience (step 5); unlocking fair financing for developing countries facing borrowing costs two to three times higher than wealthy economies (step 6); and defending science as the foundation of truth against climate disinformation that "is spread deliberately to delay action" (step 7).

On financing, Guterres cited $600 to $800 billion in additional lending capacity from multilateral development banks — including the World Bank — that should be mobilized "aggressively" to fund future infrastructure and climate adaptation. The $300 billion promised by developed countries to help vulnerable nations must be delivered, along with concrete steps to mobilize $1.3 trillion per year by 2035.

The AI environmental transparency initiative: an explosive announcement

Data centers as the new energy giants

The most unexpected announcement in Guterres's London speech concerned artificial intelligence. The Secretary-General launched an AI Environmental Transparency Initiative, calling on all major AI companies to measure and publish the full environmental impact of their systems — carbon, water and land footprint — and to commit to powering every data center with renewable energy by 2030. "It's time to come clean," he said explicitly.

The figures he cited are staggering: AI data centers already consume more electricity than most nations. By 2030, they could use more than all countries except five — and enough water to meet the basic needs of all 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa for an entire year. This explosive demand for energy and water to power artificial intelligence risks undermining decarbonization efforts if it is not managed intentionally.

AI and the climate transition: enemies or allies?

Guterres was careful to add nuance: AI is not only a problem for the climate — it can also be a solution. AI models can accelerate the discovery of new battery materials, optimize electrical grids to integrate intermittent renewable energy, improve forecasting of extreme weather events, and accelerate climate modeling. The challenge is to ensure this potentially powerful tool is deployed in ways that contribute to the transition rather than impede it.

The transparency demand is therefore a precondition for AI to claim a role in the climate solution: you cannot present yourself as a decarbonization actor while hiding your own carbon balance sheet. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, Meta — all are developing AI infrastructure whose environmental footprint remains largely opaque. Guterres's initiative aims to change that.

The Iran war: when geopolitics destroys fossil illusions

Hormuz as a metaphor for vulnerability

The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world's oil transits, found itself at the center of the 2026 Iran crisis. The disruption of that maritime route — even partial, even temporary — was enough to trigger what Guterres called "the mother of all energy shocks." The fragility is structural: a tiny fraction of the world's geography controls a massive share of the planet's energy flows. That is the result of decades of building the global economy around oil and gas.

Guterres explicitly mentioned the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor as an alternative to develop — a land and maritime trade route that would bypass the most vulnerable chokepoints. But he did not stop there: the real solution, in his view, is not to find better routes for oil, but to build an economy that no longer depends on it. An argument the Iran crisis makes politically viable in a way that climate appeals alone had failed to accomplish.

The West trapped by oil against its will

What is cruel in the situation Guterres described in London is that the West — which has theoretically advanced furthest in the energy transition — remains deeply exposed to oil shocks because the rest of the global economy still is. The United States produces enough oil to cover its domestic consumption, but its European allies remain net importers. And even the United States is not immune to the economic effects of an oil shock on its allies and its security commitments.

The Iran war also tested Western coherence: how do you support a transition toward clean energy while being militarily involved in a region whose strategic value remains defined by its oil? This contradiction is unresolved. It manifests in debates over military investments in the Middle East, in energy sanctions waiver policies, and in the tension between the climate commitments made at G7 summits and the realities of daily energy purchases.

Russia in the climate equation: the elephant in the room

Moscow, principal saboteur of climate action

Guterres did not name Russia explicitly in his London speech, but its presence was implicit in every argument about fossil fuels. Russia is the world's third largest oil producer, the largest exporter of natural gas, and one of the leading actors in methane flaring — a practice consisting of burning the methane associated with oil production rather than capturing it. In 2025 alone, Guterres mentioned that 167 billion cubic meters of gas were burned into the atmosphere — equivalent to the entire annual consumption of Africa.

Putin's Russia has every interest in impeding climate action: every dollar spent on fossil fuels is a dollar financing its war economy. Climate disinformation — a phenomenon Guterres explicitly condemned in his speech — finds one of its principal sponsors in Moscow. Russian trolls have systematically amplified anti-energy-transition messages in Western countries, hoping to prolong Europe's dependence on Russian gas and delay policies that could reduce Russia's oil revenues.

Ukraine and renewables: an inspiring paradox

While Russia deliberately bombed Ukrainian energy infrastructure to plunge the population into darkness and cold, Ukraine was simultaneously developing its renewable energy capabilities to reduce its vulnerability. Decentralized solar, small hydroelectric production units, and smart grids capable of operating in islanded mode when the main grid is damaged became national resilience priorities. It is no coincidence that the countries most motivated by the energy transition in Europe are often those that have suffered most from the geopolitical consequences of their dependence on Russian fossil fuels.

Ukraine is the living laboratory of what Guterres preaches in London: energy security and the climate transition are two sides of the same coin. A country that produces its energy locally from renewable sources is a country that Putin cannot bomb into darkness. That is a national defense argument that generals understand better than economists.

The Global Methane Action Call: the priority of priorities

Why methane is the most urgent target

At the London Climate Action Week, Guterres launched a Global Methane Action Call — identifying this gas as the most immediately accessible climate target. Methane is responsible for approximately one-third of current climate warming and degrades in ten to twenty years in the atmosphere. Reducing methane emissions now will produce measurable climate effects within the same decade — unlike CO₂ reductions whose effects take centuries to fully materialize.

The three steps Guterres prescribed for methane are concrete: detect and repair every leak, eliminate routine flaring and venting, and adopt a global methane standard with a robust system of measurement, reporting and verification. "Countries like Norway have already shown the way," he said — if every oil and gas producer reached Norwegian standards, methane emissions from the oil and gas sector would fall by 90 percent.

Who is blocking action on methane?

Resistance to methane action comes from several directions. Oil and gas producing countries — including some G20 members — fear that strict methane standards would make their production non-competitive. Some developing countries resist a separate push on methane because of its connection to agriculture and livestock. Russia, which is among the worst global actors on methane flaring, is manifestly uninterested in transparency and reduction standards that would shine a light on its practices.

But Guterres was clear: "The era of voluntary action is over." The need for legally binding decisions, with independent verification mechanisms and real consequences for non-compliant states, is now recognized as unavoidable. The question is whether international political will matches that ambition at COP31 in Turkey.

Climate finance: the promises and the chasms of non-delivery

$300 billion promised, $1.3 trillion needed

Climate finance remains one of the most gaping fractures in international climate diplomacy. Developed countries promised to deliver $300 billion per year to vulnerable nations to finance their adaptation and energy transition. Guterres called for "concrete steps to mobilize $1.3 trillion per year by 2035" — a sum that better reflects the true scale of developing countries' adaptation needs in the face of climate impacts.

The gap between the $300 billion promised and the $1.3 trillion needed is not simply arithmetic — it is the chasm between what wealthy countries are willing to put on the table and what the physics of climate change requires. Developing countries — which have contributed least to the problem — pay the highest price in terms of droughts, floods, cyclones and population displacement. Climate equity is a moral question as much as a political one.

Taxing fossil profits to fund the transition

Guterres made a concrete and politically courageous policy proposal: taxing the exceptional profits of fossil fuel companies to fund the transition to clean energy and support vulnerable communities. "The eight largest fossil fuel companies reported an additional $6.5 billion in profits in the first quarter of this year alone," he said. "I urge governments to tax them." This proposal faces considerable resistance from oil lobbies in most Western democracies, but it has the merit of coherence: those who profited most from fossil fuels should finance most of the transition.

The political feasibility of this tax varies considerably by country. The European Union has already experimented with windfall energy profit taxes after the 2022 gas crisis. The United Kingdom put a similar tax in place. The United States, with its politically powerful oil industry, remains strongly resistant to this idea. And producing countries like Saudi Arabia or the UAE are structurally opposed to anything that would reduce their fossil revenues.

COP31 in Turkey: the next moment of truth

Turkey as host of a decisive moment

Guterres cited COP31 in Turkey as the next crucial step in global climate governance. Turkey — a country occupying a unique geographical and political position at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia — will have the responsibility of hosting the most important negotiations since the Paris Agreement, in a context marked by the 1.5°C overshoot, the Iran crisis and intense geopolitical tensions.

The choice of Anatolia as the COP31 site is itself laden with political meaning: Erdoğan's Turkey has complex relations with Russia, is developing its own energy exports, and is not necessarily the country most aligned with the European Union's climate ambitions. This tension will be a permanent subtext of the negotiations, adding a layer of complexity to discussions that are already extraordinarily difficult.

What COP31 must accomplish to remain credible

For COP31 to remain a credible forum rather than a ceremonial gathering of hollow declarations, several minimum conditions must be met. The nationally determined contributions of G20 countries must be aligned with a maximum emissions reduction trajectory. The $300 billion in promised financing must be unlocked with clear verification mechanisms. The methane initiative must produce binding commitments rather than voluntary statements.

And beyond these technical elements, COP31 must find a way to keep the most important actors in the room — notably the United States under the Trump administration, whose commitment to climate agreements remains uncertain. Without effective American participation, climate agreements lack a central piece too important to ignore. This is the paradox of climate governance: you need those who pollute most to clean up the problem they largely created.

What this speech says about the state of the world in 2026

A Secretary-General speaking at the edge of the precipice

Guterres's speech at the 2026 London Climate Action Week stands apart from previous ones by its tone: less pleading, more incisive. He no longer asks governments to "consider" climate action — he tells them what must be done, within what timeframe, and cites the consequences for those who refuse to act. That is the language of a man who has exhausted small-steps diplomacy and now speaks with the authority of incontestable physical reality.

The European heat wave during his speech, the Iran crisis at the same moment, the scientific data on the likely 1.5°C overshoot within the coming years — all of this converges to transform what were previously theoretical projections into observable realities. Guterres no longer needs to convince his interlocutors that climate change is real: he can now focus on the political and economic arguments for action.

The West as both central actor and part of the problem

This London speech also says something important about the West's position in the climate crisis. The West is simultaneously the largest historical emitter, the primary holder of transition technologies, the region that has advanced furthest in its decarbonization ambitions, and — via its military interventions and energy dependencies — an active actor in the destabilization of fossil regions. This contradiction is not a reason to despair: it is a reason to act with coherence. And coherence would start by massively accelerating renewables, taxing fossil profits, financing the transition of developing countries, and stopping treating oil as an immutable necessity rather than a dependence to be overcome.

Cities on the front line: urban planning and resilience against heat waves

London as a symbol of urban vulnerability

When Guterres spoke beneath the London heat wave of June 23, 2026, he was not merely choosing a climate metaphor — he was bearing witness to an immediate physical reality. London, like most of the world's major metropolises, is a city designed for a climate that no longer exists. Its old stone streets, its underground transport without air conditioning, its old buildings without adequate thermal insulation transform heat waves into public health emergencies. The 15,000 additional deaths recorded in Europe during the 2003 heat wave remain the reference point for what climate change can cost in human lives on a single continent over just a few weeks.

Climate urbanism has become one of the priorities of Guterres's agenda: sponge cities capable of absorbing torrential rainfall, green rooftops, cool corridors, revisions of building codes to impose thermal insulation standards, early warning systems for vulnerable populations. These adaptations cost money — but far less than the human and economic costs of unmanaged heat waves. Urban adaptation to climate change is one of the most cost-effective policies available to local and national governments.

Cities of the Global South: the forgotten urgency

While European heat waves make Western media headlines, cities of the Global South — Karachi, Dhaka, Lagos, Khartoum — experience even more severe extreme climate events with far more limited adaptation resources. The heat wave that struck Pakistan in April 2025 produced wet-bulb temperatures near the lethal physiological threshold for human beings in several regions. Studies have shown that some tropical zones are approaching conditions where outdoor work will become physically impossible for several weeks per year by 2050.

Guterres explicitly mentioned vulnerable populations as a priority in step 5 of his plan. But "mentioning" is not "funding." The $300 billion promised for developing-country climate finance is largely insufficient given the scale of adaptation needs in Global South cities. This is not only a matter of climate equity — it is about preventing mass population displacements that would destabilize entire regions and create migratory pressures that even wealthy countries cannot easily absorb.

Global agriculture under stress: feeding 9 billion in a warming world

Agricultural yields under climate pressure

Climate change is not limited to spectacular extreme events — heat waves, hurricanes, floods. It also affects, in a less visible but equally important way, global agricultural productivity. IPCC studies project yield declines for major cereal crops — wheat, corn, rice — in tropical and subtropical regions if warming exceeds 2°C. These declines would not be uniform: some more northerly regions could benefit from extended growing seasons, but the populations most dependent on agriculture for food security are predominantly located in the most affected zones.

The global food crisis of 2022 — triggered in part by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one of the world's breadbaskets — was a reminder of the fragility of global food supply chains. Climate change poses a structural risk to those same supply chains on a decadal time horizon. Extreme weather events — simultaneous droughts in several producing zones, floods destroying harvests — can produce food shocks comparable to that of 2022, but on a recurring basis.

Climate-resilient agriculture as a strategic investment

The response to this challenge is not only to reduce emissions to limit warming — it is also to invest massively in climate-resilient agricultural practices. Agroforestry, conservation agriculture, efficient irrigation systems, the development of drought- and heat-resistant crop varieties — these practices exist, are proven, and can maintain agricultural productivity in a changing climate. But their large-scale deployment in developing countries requires financing that the $300 billion promised is insufficient to cover.

The link between food security, climate change and international security is well documented. Studies have shown that periods of food stress correlate with elevated risks of political conflict, migration and instability in developing countries. Investing in climate agricultural resilience is not only humanitarianism — it is conflict prevention. Guterres framed it in terms of climate justice; he could equally have framed it in terms of global security.

The Paris Agreement six years on: assessment and prospects

What the Paris Agreement accomplished — and what it failed to do

The Paris Agreement of 2015 represented a historic turning point: for the first time, nearly every nation in the world committed to a common framework for reducing emissions. It survived the first Trump administration, which had withdrawn the United States before the Biden administration rejoined. It structured global climate diplomacy for a decade. And it indisputably accelerated the transition toward renewable energy in many countries, by giving investors and companies the visibility needed to plan long-term investments.

But the Paris Agreement has not delivered on its most ambitious promises. Nationally determined contributions — voluntary by definition — have not been raised sufficiently. The 1.5°C objective now appears out of reach given current trajectories. Climate finance for developing countries has remained below commitments. And verification and enforcement mechanisms remain insufficient to constrain the non-compliant. Guterres implicitly acknowledged this in his speech: the era of voluntary action is over.

Toward a more binding post-Paris framework

The debate about what should succeed or complement the Paris Agreement is occupying growing space in diplomatic and scientific circles. Several approaches are being explored: carbon border adjustment mechanisms that penalize exports from low-ambition countries — modeled on the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism — to create economic incentives for climate action. Climate clauses in international trade agreements. An international climate tribunal with real jurisdiction. Automatic financial penalties for states that deviate from their declared trajectories.

None of these measures is politically easy to adopt in an international system founded on national sovereignty. But the physics of climate change does not negotiate with international politics. If the Paris Agreement and its successors do not produce the necessary emissions reductions, the physical consequences will impose themselves — heat waves, rising seas, agricultural disruptions — at an economic and human cost far exceeding that of the ambitious climate policies governments hesitate to adopt.

Youth and climate justice: the generation that will inherit today's decisions

Young people as actors in climate change

The global youth movement for the climate — embodied by figures like Greta Thunberg and thousands of less-publicized activists in countries of the Global South — has transformed global climate politics by making visible the fact that the decisions made by current generations will have disproportionate consequences on future ones. Young people demonstrating in the streets of London, Paris, Nairobi or Jakarta are not demanding the luxury of a better future — they are demanding the possibility of a future at all.

Guterres has always given significant weight to the intergenerational dimension of climate change. His Youth Envoy for Climate Change initiative aims to institutionalize youth voices in UN decision-making processes. But beyond symbolism, the question of how to represent the interests of future generations in political processes dominated by the immediate interests of current generations remains a fundamental governance challenge for all democracies.

Climate litigation: justice as a pressure tool

A relatively recent phenomenon has added a new dimension to the climate struggle: climate litigation. Youth organizations, coastal communities and vulnerable island nations have initiated legal proceedings against states and companies for their contribution to climate change. In the Netherlands, the landmark Urgenda ruling in 2019 forced the government to accelerate its emissions reductions. Similar cases are underway in dozens of countries. The International Court of Justice has been asked for an advisory opinion on states' climate obligations.

These cases are not the primary solution to climate change — but they create legal and media pressures that complement political and economic pressures. They force governments to justify their climate decisions before courts that can evaluate whether they are consistent with their own legal commitments. And they give future generations a tool — imperfect, slow, but real — to hold current decision-makers accountable for the consequences of their choices.

Conclusion: two crises, one solution, one urgency

The central message that transcends circumstances

What Guterres said in London on June 23, 2026 will resonate for a long time because it is true: the climate crisis and the geopolitical energy crisis share the same source — fossil fuels — and the same solution — renewable energy. This is not a coincidence or a fortunate convergence. It is a historic opportunity that the world may have the chance to seize if governments finally decide to align their actions with their declarations.

The Iran war, the resulting oil shock, the European heat wave during the speech, the data on the 1.5°C overshoot — all of this constitutes a rare alignment of crises that makes inaction politically harder to defend than action. Guterres may be right to call this a "fair transition opportunity." But opportunities open and close, and this one will not remain available indefinitely.

What the West must do — now

The practical conclusion for Western governments — and in particular for those of the European Union, which have the institutions, the means and the declared will to act — is simple: accelerate renewable energy deployment, invest massively in smart grids and energy storage, tax fossil profits to fund the transition, and stop indirectly financing its own geopolitical crises through its hydrocarbon purchases. This is not idealism — it is national security policy grounded in sound economic calculations. The West can remain at the center of the world. But not while remaining a prisoner of the energy landscape of the 20th century.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My biases and analytical stance

I am Maxime Marquette, a columnist-analyst convinced that the transition toward renewable energy is both climatically necessary and strategically beneficial for the West. I am not affiliated with fossil fuel industry interests or environmental groups. My perspective is that of a geopolitical analyst who regards energy dependence as a vector of strategic vulnerability as dangerous as any other.

What I don't know

The details of ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran remain largely opaque. The exact state of preparatory discussions for COP31 is unknown to me beyond what is made public. Projections on AI energy consumption by 2030 are estimates subject to considerable uncertainty. I use publicly available data from official speeches and reliable press reporting.

Sources

Primary sources

UN — Secretary-General's special address to the London Climate Action Week — June 23, 2026

UN News — Guterres launches call for clean energy and targets fossil fuels — June 23, 2026

UN News — Guterres: methane is a battle we can win — June 24, 2026

Secondary sources

World Resources Institute — Statement on Guterres's address at London Climate Action Week — June 23, 2026

Economic Times — UN chief ups climate pitch, targets fossil fuels and AI — June 24, 2026

UN Web TV — Guterres at the Local Climate Action Summit, London Climate Action Week — June 23, 2026

UN Web TV — Guterres at the Climate and Development Finance Forum 2026 — June 24, 2026