Below is a statement issued by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell on Tuesday 28 July 2026, as spiraling climate-driven disasters put lives at risk and hammer economies around the world.
The climate alarm is blaring, from every direction.
Around the world, climate-driven disasters are reaching nightmare proportions, as the costs of humanity's addiction to burning coal, oil and gas keep spiraling upwards.
These record-breaking wildfires tearing through France, Spain and other parts of Europe, forcing mass evacuations and hammering regional and national economies, follow brutal heatwaves that have dried out landscapes. With the mercury set to soar again this week, the awful costs of this climate crisis - both human and economic - are now reaching national emergency levels.
In North Africa, temperatures are approaching 49°C, putting lives and livelihoods in grave jeopardy, and putting hospitals and power systems under severe strain. In Chile, deadly storms have destroyed homes and lives. While in Japan, records are tumbling as temperatures soar, now reaching the longest 40°C heat streak ever recorded.
These spiraling disasters are now the lived reality for billions in a world getting rapidly hotter, as humanity moves too slowly from fossil fuels to clean energy and to protect forests.
The science on the cause is unequivocal: global heating, driven by humanity burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas, is making protracted heatwaves, severe floods and violent mega-storms more frequent, more intense and more costly.
What needs to be done is equally clear: leave coal, oil and gas behind faster, scale up renewables, and protect people where the impacts are already hitting hardest. Many vulnerable countries on the frontlines need support to move at the speed and scale this crisis demands.
