Charles Rotter
COP31 opens Monday in Antalya, Turkey, and runs through November 20. Climate Home News has published its pre-summit briefing. The first two paragraphs set the frame.
This is the first COP to be staring an almost certain overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit in the face, even as countries squabble over when the next UN science reports should be delivered.
The geopolitical mood ahead of the annual talks, from November 9-20, has been sweetened somewhat by Lula’s surprise re-election in Brazil and American voters delivering a thumbs down to climate change-sceptic Donald Trump in the US midterms this week.
On the temperature claim, the Paris Agreement talks about a long-term global average, not a single warm year. Copernicus Climate Change Service puts the current global surface warming level at about 1.4°C above 1850–1900 by the end of 2025, and notes that one or two years above 1.5°C do not mean the Paris level has been breached. 2024 was the warmest year in their record, at about 1.55°C; 2025 came in at 1.47°C. The United Nations itself says the same thing: monthly and annual breaches are not a failure of the Paris temperature goal. What UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025 actually says is that, on current policies and pledges, a higher exceedance of 1.5°C is “very likely within the next decade.” That is a scenario projection about national climate plans. Climate Home’s “almost certain” and “staring… in the face” treat that scenario projection as if it were already settled fact.
The midterms are thinner still. Democrats took the House and the Senate on Tuesday, a repudiation of President Trump with him still in the White House. The Associated Press named the drivers as high prices, the Iran war and concerns over government corruption. Climate Home upgrades that into “a thumbs down to climate change-sceptic Donald Trump.” Divided government may slow some of Trump’s energy rollbacks, but it is just not a climate referendum.
The host’s flagship is electrification. Turkey wants governments to sign a voluntary pledge to raise electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035. Climate Home reports, correctly, that the text talks about “diverse and sustainable energy sources” and stops short of requiring that the new load be clean power. President Murat Kurum says wider electrification will “automatically” cut fossil use; campaigners disagree. Let’s take a close look at the country writing the pledge. Turkey’s own energy ministry says 2025 generation was 33.3% coal, 22.3% natural gas, 15.7% hydropower, 10.8% wind and 11.9% solar, with geothermal and other sources making up the rest. Ember puts fossil generation near 57% of the mix. The pledge is about more electricity without naming the fuel, from a host that still runs a third of its power on coal.
The rest of the briefing is the usual COP inventory: a voluntary fossil-fuel “roadmap” from Belém that Brazil says need not be negotiated; a mitigation work programme that barely functions because Saudi Arabia, Russia and others prefer it that way; an IPCC fight over when AR7 arrives for the 2028 Global Stocktake; adaptation finance that still has no agreed baseline for last year’s “triple by 2035” promise; China wanting to talk trade measures that get in the way of its cleantech exports. The EU, Climate Home notes, is “coming empty-handed” on new money. Leaders’ speaking slots look thin, with India and China not sending their top men. In Climate Home’s telling, Antalya is where 1.5°C is finally admitted lost, and an American cost-of-living election counts as a verdict on climate policy.
COP31 starts Monday. The pledges will be announced and the cover decision will be argued over, and the long-term temperature series will be updated the same way it always is, after the fact.
===== Source: Climate Home News, “COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?”, 5 Nov 2026, https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/11/05/cop31-briefing-what-to-expect-from-the-antalya-climate-summit/
Featured image: COP31 Antalya lanyards. Photo: UNFCCC / Kiara Worth, via Climate Home News; headline text added.
