COP31: A fair, not a climate summit

The Pacific finally got its pre-COP meeting this week and only around 30 leaders gathered in Fiji and Tuvalu, with only five countries from outside the Pacific.

Vanuatu’s climate minister said he was hoping for more, adding that it “reflects the lack of attention and priority given to what Pacific nations consider the greatest threat to their future”.

The co-host, who did turn up, made the contradiction clear.

Australia’s energy minister Chris Bowen said in Nadi, Fiji, that “as a fossil fuel exporting nation, we can bring something different to the table”. He certainly can. Labor has approved 37 new or expanded fossil fuel projects since 2022.

The other COP31 host is preparing for Antalya in its own way. In September alone, Türkiye blocked at least 1270 X accounts, journalists and Amnesty Türkiye among them, more than in the whole of last year. Green Left itself is blocked in Türkiye: I can only read it through a virtual private network.

The COP31 host agreement, made public only last month, tells accredited participants they have a “duty” not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”, a clause Brazil dropped for COP30.

Put the two together and the division of labour is clear. One host keeps approving the fuel. The other prepares to silence those who might object to it. This is climate politics as it actually works.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s first report in 1990 called for emissions to be cut “immediately” by more than 60%. By 2019, its sixth report found, they were 54% higher.

Last year global energy demand grew 2.7%, with oil, gas and coal all growing.

The problem, then, is not “climate change”, a phrase that turns policy into weather. The problem is a climate-changing policy — the deliberate fueling of climate change, through more and expanded coal mines, liquified natural gas terminals and 20-year gas contracts.

The system behind the deals and who pays the bill has a name — the fossil order.

COP31 is no longer a climate summit. It is a climate-changing summit and, increasingly, a climate fair. Its Action Agenda lists 10 themes, from zero waste to electrification. None names coal, oil or gas.

Its “global business partner”, Koç Holding, owns Türkiye’s oil refineries. Its “electrification partner”, Sabancı, co-owns a lignite power plant. Its “global banking partner” will run a 400-square-metre pavilion. In Antalya, the stands will be busy and the products on display will be green. An end to fossil fuels will not be up for discussion.

Asking for a “better COP” means asking for a “better fair”.

Stopping new fossil fuel projects is no longer enough; we need to start shutting down the coal, oil and gas which is being mined now.

Free public transport, the public ownership of energy and climate-friendly cities are revolutionary demands today. They do not just make new oil wells unnecessary, they empty the ones already pumping and let us begin to close mines, wells and gas lines.

The freedom to say all this out loud, in Antalya, is a challenge to the status quo.

Movements can win these demands. Australia’s High Court ruled on October 7 that the states planning bodies must consider how the burning of fossil fuels, exported from Australia, contribute to climate damage.

“We cannot dig up coal, ship it overseas, watch it drive climate change, and pretend the consequences have nothing to do with us,” said Wendy Wales, one of the retired teachers behind the campaign to get Australia to  minimise all greenhouse gas emissions, including emissions produced from burning the exported coal emissions.

Wales said the court decision “has finally made a change in direction in our laws. The [planning rules] will now have to reflect the need to consider climate impacts of our scope three emissions from the coal that we export.”

The real climate summit has to be taken to the streets and wherever people dare to name the fossil order creating the climate emergency, which is devastating communities, who have had the least to do with creating problem.

[Önder Algedik is a climate researcher and activist with 350Ankara. His new book, Ya Fosil Düzen Ya Devrim (Fossil Order or Revolution), is published by İletişim this month.]