COP31 Opens in Antalya. Dublin Still Has No Single Voice on Ukraine

COP31 opens in Antalya this morning and runs until 20 November. Turkey is the host. Australia presides over the formal negotiations. Close to 190 countries are taking part, and more than 90 heads of state and government are expected in the city during the fortnight. The Turkish presidency has said the summit has to produce something people can see is real, after a year of record heat, an El Nino on top of fossil-fuel warming, and an inflation shock from the Iran war. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Anthony Albanese and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are due to speak. The argument in the hall is implementation: emissions cuts, adaptation, and the money to pay for both.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, is leading the British delegation. She told the Independent that the summer just gone, heatwaves, homes lost to wildfire, schools closed, meant climate change was no longer a warning about somewhere else. It was here, in Britain, now. She set Britain's asks as clean power, methane, forests and oceans, resilience, and the finance to make them happen, and she called that the national interest. Andy Burnham is not in Antalya this morning. He is at a hospital in England, launching a winter fund for GPs. He is expected at the summit later in the fortnight, as are foreign secretary Ed Miliband, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and net zero minister Katie White. Today the minister in the room is Fahnbulleh.

London's other climate meeting is on Wednesday

Turkey wants the talks to push electrification, including a hope of 35 per cent of energy systems electrified by 2035, and to put food security back into the decision after it fell out last year. Waste, the circular economy and climate finance are the other presidency themes. In London, Louise Haigh is expected to cut the 2030 electric-car sales target from 80 per cent to about 60. No decision has been taken. The two facts can both be true on a Monday: a British minister in Antalya calling decarbonisation a national interest, and a Downing Street meeting on Wednesday aimed at giving carmakers a lower number. Fahnbulleh has already said new North Sea gas will not cut bills this winter. The summit will not settle the mandate. It will make the mandate harder to describe as someone else's problem.

The host's test is blunter than a communique. Murat Kurum's presidency, and the Australian chair beside it, have been told by their own side that another text nobody can point to in a household bill is a failure. Three decades of these meetings have not cut emissions at the pace the temperature record now implies. The Iran war has made the fossil price impossible to ignore. That is the opening, not an outcome.

Dublin is three days away. The chair is still empty

The European week does not wait for Antalya. G7 foreign ministers meet in Marseille today and tomorrow, with Russia's war the main item. Kaja Kallas is there with the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Italy. On Wednesday, Ukrainian and Russian delegations are due in Abu Dhabi for US-mediated talks whose agenda already includes the security arrangements that would follow a ceasefire. The European Union is not at that table. Giorgia Meloni's letter, and António Costa's reply, left the question for Dublin: who may speak for the Union, and what they may promise. Costa will open that discussion at Friday's informal European Council. A name has not been chosen. A formal decision is still aimed at the December council.

Thursday's larger meeting, the European Political Community at the Convention Centre, brings about 50 leaders to a city that may be on strike. A 10.5 per cent pay offer is now on the table, and the unions have not called off the rallies. Last week Washington approved the sale of 500 Patriot missiles to Ukraine, a package worth 2.1 billion dollars. Democrats hold both houses of Congress after the midterms, and JD Vance has blamed the Iran war for the Republican defeat. None of that picks Europe's envoy. Dublin has three days to decide whether it wants one before Abu Dhabi has already started without them.