COP31 climate talks open in Turkey without top polluters
More than 70 leaders spoke at the 11-day summit, but China, the United States and India, which together emit over half the world's carbon dioxide, sent no top leaders.
Formal negotiations at the 31st Conference of the Parties, COP31, opened in Turkey on Wednesday, with more than 70 heads of state and senior officials taking the floor and the leaders of the world's three largest carbon emitters staying away.
The summit follows a year of deadly floods, heatwaves and other disasters. Earlier this year the United Nations said it is now inevitable that the world will warm past 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the threshold the 2015 Paris Agreement set out to hold. According to an account of the opening session carried by KSAT, the talks in Turkey are now focused on how far past that mark temperatures rise, for how long, and how to bring them back down by the end of the century.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the room the negotiations must prioritise ending reliance on fossil fuels, adapting to a hotter world and increasing financial support for poorer countries. "We do not need countries to agree on everything. But we do need them to cooperate on the things no country can solve alone," he said.
Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, said the overshoot beyond 1.5C was "not a new target, it's a debt. A debt of heat borrowed against our children's future and it must be repaid." She said every five years of delay raises projected peak warming by a tenth of a degree, and pointed to Nepal, where she said more than 1,400 people died in floods in August and thousands are still missing.
Surangel Whipps Jr, president of Palau, said: "You might as well bomb us. That might have been easier than watching climate change tear apart our homes piece by piece." Wesley Simina, president of Micronesia, described coral reefs that "protect our shores, sustain our fisheries, feed our families" as already lost. Both he and Mottley called for an agreement at these talks to cut methane, a short-lived but powerful heat-trapping gas.
China, the United States and India together account for more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions, and none sent its top leadership. The United States is absent for a second consecutive year; President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax and has targeted offshore wind projects.
"It really is a disgrace that just one of the seven G7 heads of state and only a handful of G20 leaders are attending this summit," said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think tank.
Amy Pope, director general of the International Organization for Migration, told the Associated Press that climate change displaced almost 30 million people in 2025.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said wars, inflation and geopolitical conflict had overshadowed climate action. He pledged to protect the Amazon and told the summit: "Brazil is back to defend the continuity of a healthy planet."
How the reports differ
KSAT carried the fullest account of the opening session, including the speeches of the presidents of Palau and Micronesia, Mia Mottley's remarks on Nepal's August floods, and the figure of almost 30 million people displaced by climate change in 2025 given by the IOM's Amy Pope; it also named the three absent emitters and quoted Power Shift Africa's Mohamed Adow. The South China Morning Post alone reported that the conference runs 11 days and noted that past talks were criticised for promises that later fell flat. The Associated Press led its headline on concerns that action is inadequate and slow, and the reports carried by ClickOnDetroit and News4JAX consisted only of that headline and standfirst, with no detail from the speeches.
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