389: Overshoot looms. The G7 stayed home. Who’s in charge at COP31?
It's the end of COP31's first week, and from a distance the biggest story looks like the buses. More than 92,000 people registered for Antalya, and not all of them seem to have reached the venue. We wonder whether that's where the real deals get done. Ed King, author of the Climate Diplomacy Brief, joins Tom Rivett-Carnac, Christiana Figueres and Paul Dickinson from Antalya with the gossip and the announcements (and some reassurance for those of us who stayed home).
About this episode
Türkiye holds the gavel and Australia runs the negotiations, so who's actually in charge? The flagship pledge to get electricity to 35% of global energy use by 2035 doesn't say the power has to be clean. Campaigners call that a flaw. Christiana calls it creative ambiguity. Countries still can't agree whether there should be a cover decision at all. And with the UK's Andy Burnham the only G7 leader to make the trip, the clearest leadership so far has come from the Solomon Islands, with $400,000 for the Green Climate Fund.
Afterwards, the hosts ask whether the COP is turning into something other than a negotiation. Christiana has a name for it. Tom confesses to a heresy about what really keeps fossil fuels in the ground. And a question from former US negotiator Holly Kaufman goes to the hardest part of Brazil's fossil fuel roadmap: will it stop anyone drilling new fields?
UN climate chief Simon Stiell keeps saying a COP isn't a silver bullet. After a UN warning that 1.5°C will be overshot, what would count as a COP31 success? And with no US in the room and China keeping quiet, who leads in week two?
Learn More:
📰 Subscribe to the Climate Diplomacy Brief, Ed King's daily dispatches from inside COP31
📺 Watch our full conversation with Chris Bowen, COP31's president of negotiations
🎧 Listen to our episode with Palau's President Surangel Whipps Jr. on what climate finance looks like from the Pacific
⚡ Read Climate Home on who's backed the 35-by-35 electrification pledge, Türkiye's non-binding target, and the row over whether the extra electricity needs to be clean
🌍 Read PINA on the Solomon Islands' pledge to the Green Climate Fund, the first pledge to the fund's next round of funding
📊 Read Carbon Brief's analysis of COP31 delegations, which counts more than 92,000 registered attendees, possibly the most at any COP
🛢️ Read Carbon Brief's Q&A on Brazil's fossil fuel roadmap, the plan Lula wants Türkiye and Australia to pick up and run with
🌳 Explore the Brazil-led deforestation roadmap, its companion on ending forest loss, and why some countries didn't sign on
🌡️ Read UNEP's Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return, on how to keep the overshoot of 1.5°C as small and as short as possible
🏆 Discover the 2026 TIME100 Climate list, featuring quite a few friends of the podcast
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Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks Assistant Producer: Saoirse Wilson Showrunner: Caitlin Hanrahan
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
