They’re at it again. They really are. By the time you get this newsletter, barring acts of a merciful God, the COP31 conference in Antǟlya, Türkiye will be in full gridlock. And we would be remiss if we didn’t say how glad we are not to be there bringing you blow-by-blow coverage of the lack of action. Climate Home News begs to differ, asking its readers “Want daily briefings from COP31?” Uh, that’d be “not”. Of course here let us say again that we are grateful to the people who helped us go and provide exactly that from COP29 in Baku, Azerbaȉjan, in order to demonstrate that it was as bad as we had expected, and worse, in essentially the ways we’d expected. (Plus we got to see the mud volcanoes.) But who then shouts “encore”? And why?
Lots of people. Bloomberg Green was in a tizzy right away, hyping “COP31’s surprising start” in an email though their actual story started “World’s Annual Climate Talks Open Under a Dark Cloud”. As of course they should since having annual talks on something allegedly so desperately urgent that delay is insane is a clear marker of annual failure. So what was the surprise?
Well, see, “COP31 summit opened with chaotic queues and a quick resolution to an agenda fight.” As if they had any business not having an agenda before they started, or in having “chaotic queues” the 31st time they try to perform the apparently unheard-of task of giving people attending a conference credentials and letting them in. And it gets worse… or better depending how much of a glutton for punishment you are.
“COP31 is underway in the Turkish resort city of Antalya, with sunshine sparkling on the Mediterranean Sea. Inside the annual climate talks, however, there are dark clouds over a process that’s failing to deliver sufficient action to combat rising global temperatures. In this edition, we take you inside the opening day of a summit that offered some familiar scenes – long, chaotic lines for accreditation – and some surprises: An agenda fight was quickly settled, diplomats are off to a fast start on discussions over a final text, and activist Greta Thunberg is back for the first time since 2021.”
Why the former child non-prodigy turned antisemite attending is good we cannot imagine. But then we’re also not thrilled that:
“two of the factors weighing on the proceedings – the conflict-fueled energy crisis and an AI backlash – offer potential to spur new action.”
Which is fairly plainly clutching at straws, since for 31 years they’ve been telling us the imminent combustion of Earth should spur new action and in the views of, oh, say, this same article have failed to:
“Some 60,000 diplomats, officials and advocates – alongside modest contingents of world leaders and business chiefs – are expected to participate… It’s a diplomatic undertaking incommensurate with the bleak backdrop. The UN warned last month that the world can no longer keep global warming below 1.5C, a key threshold staked out by the Paris Agreement. A series of climate-fueled extreme weather events this year has underscored the risks that come with rising temperatures — including tens of thousands of deaths from lethal heat waves and wildfires across Europe and a devastating glacier collapse in Nepal.”
And not even they believe it, admitting that:
“Fewer major world leaders are set to join the talks, reflecting limited expectations…. Even more than last year’s summit in Brazil, the focus is on delivering on existing promises, rather than setting ambitious new goals. It’s ‘a bit of a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done COP,’ said David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s International Climate Initiative. ‘It’s not as flashy — but it is about getting the job done.’”
Like every one since at least the long-forgotten COP22 in wherever? (Marrakesh, if you care. We don’t.) Still, they’re there because it’s the kind of thing they like. Including Simon Stiell hollering the usual hollers:
“A super El Niño is turbocharging climate impacts, delivering a deadly double-blow. The climate crisis is now a global health crisis of pandemic proportions.”
Super turbocharging. Man, that’s hype.
And Bloomberg Green are not alone in basking in it. We deniers may have all the money. But even CHN is in a position to send a horde of people to glare at the horde of delegates, so over there you will apparently get:
“Five journalists on-site covering electrification, fossil fuel and deforestation roadmaps, climate finance, the Just Transition Mechanism and much more.”
Or not, since on Nov. 6 they wrote:
“Thanks to the electorates first of Brazil and now the US, the mood at COP31 is going to be more upbeat than it might have been – although we hear the venue is still under construction.”
And it’s an eerily appropriate metaphor, standing in for the fact that COP gatherings typically bicker over the agenda long after they’re meant to be bickering over substance precisely because they do not agree even on the stuff that is in principle possible, like rich countries giving poor countries huge amounts of money to waste, embezzle and declare vastly inadequate, let alone the things that aren’t like shutting down our economies while having them still work, and changing the weather so we’re back in the Garden of Eden which, come to think of it, was traditionally located somewhere in or near Anatȭlia.
As Climate Home News wrote four days before the opening, in “An exclusive briefing for John” that every subscriber got, risking an epidemic of narcolepsy:
“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.”
Oh yeah. There’s a sense of urgency and a cooperative spirit focused on vital issues, all right. And if you’re still clinging to consciousness, consider “In terms of the mechanics of how COP31 will work, all eyes are on the relationship between the co-hosts Türkiye and Australia” and pass out. Or, for the hard-core overcaffeinated, from Bloomberg Green:
“One of the main goals of the organizers of the United Nations climate conference starting next week in Antalya, Turkey, is to have countries party to the Paris Agreement to sign up to a goal to increase the global share of final energy demand coming from electricity to 35% by 2035, from about 20% today. So far, however, the ambition remains only a voluntary one for countries to commit to.”
Thud. Zzzzzzzzzz.
For proof of its futility, consider COP17. You can’t remember a thing about it, can you? Not even that it was in Durban, South Africa in 2011. But you can remember that world leaders said we had to act now, that they were totally on the job, that someone should give them money but rich countries said sorry, later, that its purpose was to create a new treaty but it didn’t, that it ended with marathon negotiations that left everyone too cross-eyed to know what they were signing but dimly aware that it didn’t matter, and so on.
Here let us remind you that, since the first Earth Day, a lot actually has gotten done on the real environment. Air that was dangerously smoggy is now remarkably clean in most Western cities; rivers that were unsafe to drink or even infamously caught fire in the case of the Cuyahoga in Ohio now have fish in them, and so forth. Real, practical, ideally property-rights-driven, local, adaptive, all the stuff giant windbag conferences don’t involve.
We also have doubts about things like “New York Climate Week” which again, seem to be more a chance to agree on how splendid we all are than to do anything. Especially when Bloomberg Green gives you a headline like “Finance Takes the Spotlight at New York Climate Meetings” and you think oh no, not again. Does anyone have anything to say on the subject, to anyone, that hasn’t already been said? Including by them.
Count us, more generally, as firmly in the camp that with rare exceptions meetings are a substitute for action not a form of it. As when:
“This week’s climate summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York – the last one hosted by outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres - was pretty low-key. Heads of government didn’t queue up for a speaking slot and there was little grandstanding. Instead, the atmosphere was more of gritty determination by those countries that want to push ahead with the energy transition, including Germany which became the third country to announce a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. A day earlier, the UN chief had urged every government to produce such a plan ‘with clear timelines’.”
And they didn’t. Do you even know when it was? There’s no reason you should, but in fact it was in late September so they could all rehearse or recite or something. And here’s a clear timeline: Do nothing useful ever. Foam at the mouth, rinse, repeat. (We also skipped “Electricity Transformation Canada” which wasted three days in October, and the 2026 “Montréal Climate Security Summit”. Homo conferensis sure gets around… but don’t these people have day jobs?)
Actually The Economist “The Climate Issue” for Sept. 25, 2026 sighed:
“For good or ill, annual events can take on an aura of sameness. Shuttling between the plethora of events that make up New York Climate Week—deliberately timed to coincide with the city-clogging UN General Assembly—it feels as though, if you were to skip through time rather than space to a roundtable or briefing being held last year, or next year, it would be distressingly easy not to notice.”
Then it suddenly perked up with “But over time things do change” before mentioning a bunch of ways governments had misdirected resources to little or no good effect. Which we call same old same old.
Speaking of which, among the main COPs, of course #21 in Paris in 2015 agreed to limit global warming to 1.5C above “preindustrial” times for no good reason, using no good method. But it too didn’t work. People remember COP21, but for all the wrong reasons it seems. And guess what? A week and a half before COP31 lumbered into inaction, Bloomberg Green wrote of “COP’s grim climate finance outlook” that “Climate Finance Prospects ‘Dead in the Water’ at COP31, EU Official Says”. And at least there’s something vaguely precocious about failing dismally before you even start instead of after you were meant to wrap up.
