COP31 leaders split on fossil fuels as Antalya talks turn to drafting

Governments at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, turned to drafting a final agreement on Thursday after two days of speeches by world leaders exposed how far apart they remain on fossil fuels, finance and electrification.

A UN report published last month found the world is already on course to break through the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit that countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to pursue.

Leaders of small island states, among them the Bahamas, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Saint Lucia, called on Thursday for rapid cuts. "Major emitters must move beyond the usual promises. They must reduce emissions that the climate crisis demands," Saint Lucia's Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre said.

Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodriguez took the opposite ground. "We reaffirm our sovereign right to strengthen our energy and oil industry as a driver of our national development," she told the conference, after UN officials had argued for an end to the fossil fuel age. Fossil fuel producers argued at the talks that oil, gas and coal should keep being used.

European leaders backed a proposal to expand global electrification. Developing countries repeated a demand made at successive UN talks for rich countries to fund cleaner energy, adaptation to a hotter world and repair of climate-driven damage.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham endorsed a Turkish proposal to lift electricity's share of world energy consumption to 35 per cent by 2035, from a little over a fifth now. Turkey has not said whether the extra power would be renewable. Burnham said supply disruptions from the US-Israeli war with Iran and Russia's war with Ukraine showed that energy a country does not control leaves it exposed to prices it cannot control. "The shift to clean energy is the only route to energy security," he said.

Chris Bowen, the Australian president of the negotiations, told Reuters his job was to steer consensus rather than "bang tables and demand any particular action". Asked what a good deal would look like, he said he had "many more hours of consultations with partners to do". Turkey hosts the conference and Australia leads the negotiations, both while wars and inflation have pushed climate down the political agenda in many capitals.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, speaking on the sidelines, said: "The situation could not be less under control. The planet is not dying. It is being killed." She said it was being killed "by the very same people often thought to come to our rescue".

Fernanda de Carvalho, head of climate policy at the WWF environmental group, called the speeches underwhelming. COP31, he said, is the first UN climate conference since scientists publicly concluded the world is set to breach 1.5C. "It is worrying that the climate issue is not as high on the global political agenda as it needs to be," he said.