The oil crisis triggered by the conflict in the Middle East highlights the need to curb fossil fuel dependence and accelerate the clean energy transition, climate envoys said Monday at talks in Germany, held ahead of this year's COP31 summit.
The Bonn climate conference – gathering negotiators ahead of the November summit in Turkey – kicked off as Iran and Israel launched new strikes at each other, rattling a fragile cease-fire.
U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell linked the push for faster climate action to deadly heatwaves, the looming impacts of the warming El Nino weather pattern and the war in the Middle East.
The war "causes immense human suffering and sparks a fossil fuel cost crisis that's strangling economies everywhere," Stiell said at the opening of the two-week conference.
"It's crystal clear: continuing our fossil fuel dependency means continuing to import inflation and economic instability," he said.
