World leaders in Antalya seek to keep 1.5C goal alive after UN warning

At the COP31 climate conference under way in Antalya, Turkey, world leaders are straining to keep alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, even though the United Nations has told the world that this limit will soon be exceeded.

The Antalya summit is the first climate talks since the UN's announcement. For more than a decade, this Paris Agreement target has steered the direction of COP negotiations.

The UN said last month that, even if countries dramatically slash greenhouse gas emissions starting right now, the best outcome would be a rise in global temperatures of 1.8 degrees. If vast amounts of carbon removal technology are also deployed, there is in theory a chance of getting back to 1.5 degrees after surpassing it, the agency said.

In reality, however, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, and the carbon-removal technologies needed for that reversal are unproven at scale.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her speech to fellow leaders on Wednesday, 'We are on course to overshoot the 1.5 degree target, and every fraction of a degree matters. So we must double down.'

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine told leaders, 'Let's show that the fight for 1.5C is not over.' She said overshoot means waves eating away shores and flooding that destroys towns, schools and hospitals.

Even before the talks began, Danish Climate Minister Samira Nawa told Politico that her country's priority was to push for keeping the 1.5C target in the heart of global climate ambitions.

Johan Rockström, a climate scientist and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said he does not support the political messaging of keeping 1.5C alive — but on the other hand, he does not want to lose it. If scientists criticise it, he said, politicians might indeed drop it and aim for 2 degrees instead, which would be a big mistake.

Christiana Figueres, who headed the UN climate body when the Paris Agreement was adopted, said there is no way to lose that anchor, out of moral responsibility toward the people who have contributed the least and are the most impacted.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders in his opening speech on Wednesday that leaders, in particular those from developed countries, cannot keep expanding fossil fuel production while claiming to be committed to 1.5 degrees.

Yet immediately afterwards, the opposite picture was also visible. Australia, COP31 co-hosts with Turkey, is expanding investments in coal and natural gas, even as its Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen urges leaders in Antalya to act with urgency, solidarity and resolve. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that with every minute of failing to achieve the Paris Agreement targets, the risks and costs grow; two days earlier, he had celebrated the discovery of two new oil fields. UK climate minister Katie White said breaching 1.5 isn't where we down tools and give up; a day later, her own department approved a major natural gas project in the North Sea.

The United States has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and is no longer part of the COP talks.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said on Wednesday that cutting methane by nearly half by 2030 could avoid almost 0.3 degrees of warming by the 2040s and save 250,000 lives every year. 'This buys us the time to get back to the 1.5 degrees,' she said. She also called for a global movement of '1.5 billion voices for 1.5 degrees' before COP32 next year.

Tina Stege, the Marshall Islands' climate envoy, told reporters that the difficulty of the challenge is not a reason to not do everything that can absolutely be done, and that every country that showed up at these talks to do the work needs to do that work and more.