Wire reporting: (Reuters, via Rappler)

World leaders at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, spent two days laying out incompatible demands on emissions, money and energy, then handed negotiators the job of finding a deal all can accept^6,10. Turkey is hosting with Australia leading talks, and the headline offer is a “35-by-35” push to raise electricity’s share of world energy use from about 21% to 35% by 2035^5,9.

Small island governments described warming as a survival issue and asked major emitters to cut faster, while developing countries again sought more finance to switch fuels, adapt and pay for loss and damage^6,7. Oil producers pushed back: Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, told the conference her country would keep strengthening its oil industry as a development driver^6,10.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, reported as the only Group of Seven leader in Antalya, said consensus on both science and climate change had gone and still promised a new stretch of British leadership¹. He restated the 2050 net-zero goal, said the climate crisis was already here, and named former Joint Intelligence Committee head Dame Madeleine Alessandri as a climate security envoy^1,2. Politico Europe reported he backed electrification in principle but did not endorse the 35% electricity-share target, and that his government had recently cut heat-pump subsidy funding². BBC noted critics pointing to weaker green policies at home, including the Jackdaw gas field and Heathrow expansion¹.

The United States federal government has no official delegation for a second year after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement process^3,7. Pacific ministers said work should continue anyway; Marshall Islands minister Jess Gasper said the United States still mattered as a major emitter, and UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell pointed to U.S. states and other non-federal actors³.

Independent Climate Action Tracker, cited by SCMP, said progress that had cut projected warming in the first five years after Paris had stalled for five years, leaving an overshoot of 1.5 degrees Celsius looking hard to reverse, and that even full delivery of current pledges pointed toward about 2.6C by 2100⁷. Tuvalu’s climate minister, Maina Vakafua Talia, said COP31 would fail unless it answered that overshoot³.

Co-host speeches largely skipped fossil fuels, according to The Conversation: neither President Recep Tayyip Erdogan nor Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used the phrase in opening remarks, while Australia’s negotiations president, Chris Bowen, did twice and Turkey’s COP president Murat Kurum did not⁵. Brazil, last year’s host, presented a fossil-fuel transition roadmap⁵. Bowen told Reuters, via Rappler and Daily Maverick, that his job was to steer consensus, not bang tables^6,10.

Turkey signed about $5.1 billion in loans with the Asian Development Bank, AIIB, World Bank and Islamic Development Bank for climate projects, infrastructure and small firms, Middle East Eye reported⁴. African governments pitched forest carbon sales; Ghana said TREES credits could bring about $43 million, and Gabon described a six-million-tonne aviation-eligible deal, while partnership figures put forests at under 1% of climate finance⁸.

The Associated Press reported that more than 120 civil-society groups want human-rights and environmental conditions on 35-by-35 because the pledge does not require electricity to come from renewables and would raise demand for transition minerals⁹. The COP31 presidencies did not comment to AP⁹. What a final text will say on fossil fuels, finance and electrification remains unsettled^6,5.