COP31 activists urge leaders to act on climate crisis

Activists from around the globe held a news conference on the sidelines of the UN climate talks currently underway in Turkey to call for immediate action.

Speaking at the conference, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg warned of a worsening future, saying, "We are heading towards a future of more genocides and more ecocides and the complete compromise of our basic rights and where basic necessities become luxury."

"That the situation could not be less under control. The planet is not dying; it is being killed. And we know by who. And it is been killed by the very same people often thought to come to our rescue. No one is coming to our rescue."

The world has failed to slow or stop global warming trends in the past five years because plans weren’t realized and efforts that would have helped were canceled out, a report by independent Climate Action Tracker stated Thursday.

The grim assessment came during a U.N. climate meeting in Antalya, Turkey, where more government leaders were due to speak Thursday about the state of a warming world and what they hope to do about it.

Because collective efforts of countries haven't significantly reduced global emissions, the world is now “headed toward an irrecoverable overshoot of 1.5 degrees Celsius” (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures, which is the warming threshold the world adopted during the Paris Agreement, according to the report.

The report said if the nations of the world fulfill all their climate promises — which is a big if — the globe will end the century 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than preindustrial times.