COP31 climate summit opens in Antalya without the US
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Leaders urged faster climate action as COP31 opened in Antalya, Turkey, on Monday. The US administration is staying away from the talks for a second year running.
The COP31 climate summit opened on Monday in Antalya, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, beginning two weeks of talks. UN and government leaders said climate change must stay in focus even as it competes for attention with war, soaring inflation and uncertainty linked to artificial intelligence.
UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said progress so far was "nowhere near fast enough." A UN Environment Programme report published in October said the world was already poised to overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, the threshold set at the 2015 Paris summit. A UN report on Monday showed this year is on track to be one of the four hottest on record.
The COP31 presidency is focusing on a goal to electrify more than a third of the global economy by 2035, up from around a fifth today, and is asking nations to sign a pledge supporting it. Climate advocates have criticised the pledge because it does not require the extra electricity to come from low-carbon sources.
President Donald Trump's administration is staying away from the talks for the second year running. It has encouraged policies to maximise oil, gas and coal production in response to supply disruptions linked to the US-Israeli war with Iran and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which have pushed prices and inflation higher. Stiell said renewable energy was the clear answer to improving energy security.
