Third day of UN talks begin but leaders of many big polluting nations absent
Solving the climate crisis is hard but even getting to the venue to discuss it has become a challenge here in Antalya. Snarled roads and packed trams left people waiting for hours in traffic and lines yesterday and there was widespread horror at the prospect of an even worse situation this morning with the arrival of world leaders.
The Cop31 venue, on the outskirts of Antalya, is festooned with police and masked soldiers as the leaders arrive, with roads blocked or narrowed. The presence of VIPs often causes some delay at Cops but this summit has been unusually arduous.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
11/11/2026 - 02:00
Colin McPherson has spent three decades working on Catching the Tide, his moving portrayal of fishers and an old way of life that is dying out
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11/11/2026 - 02:00
Many governments are yet to set targets, leaving recipient countries struggling to plan and attract private investment
Developing countries have been left in limbo by the failure of some of the world’s biggest economies to flesh out their plans for new climate finance.
Poor countries are supposed to receive $300bn a year from the governments of industrialised nations by 2035, along with about $1tn from other sources, to help them cope with the effects of extreme weather and shift to a low-carbon future.
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11/11/2026 - 01:00
The transition to electric vehicles should be moving apace, but it is not. And why? Incompetence, expedience and cowardice
This is how it works. An industry puts tremendous effort into resisting change: lobbying governments, mobilising the media, pouring money into junktanks. It argues that a transition would threaten jobs, or damage the national interest, or harm poor people, while what it really fears is the cost of retooling its plants or developing new protocols. Then, when the inevitable cliff edge approaches, it whines that change is coming too soon. For reasons beyond its control, it isn’t ready, so the government must delay its plans.
This is what triggered the Dutch nitrate crisis, and the UK’s repeated “emergency” exemptions from the ban on a devastating class of pesticides. Now the same dynamic is driving the UK’s crisis over the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). The result is that, as the global climate summit, Cop31, begins, it looks as if our gift to the world will be a major, predictable and entirely avoidable increase in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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11/11/2026 - 00:00
Conservationists relocate 3,400 one-flowered wintergreens, a species estimated to have lost more than half its UK population in the past 50 years
Thousands of one of Britain’s rarest wildflowers have been moved to safety from an eroding Scottish shoreline where they were at risk of falling into the sea.
Conservationists rescued 3,400 one-flowered wintergreen plants at Culbin Forest in Moray, in an effort to protect a species estimated to have lost more than half its UK population in the past 50 years.
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11/10/2026 - 10:01
Conservation group acquires former US president’s family farm with plans to transfer it to the state in 2028
Jimmy Carter’s family farm has been acquired by a group dedicated to permanently protecting the south-west Georgia land where the late former president’s conservation ethic took hold, officials announced on Monday.
A statement from the Conservation Fund said it plans to open Carter’s family farm – on about 2,458 acres (995 hectares) outside his home town of Plains, Georgia – to the public for hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreation as soon as 2027, with the group set to transfer the land to the state’s natural resources department in 2028.
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11/10/2026 - 08:00
Skagway’s 1,100 permanent residents are caught between a boom time – when the ships bring more than a million tourists – and a lull in winter
October comes to the small Alaska coastal town of Skagway like a sigh. The shops that were bustling throughout the crazed tourist season are reducing their opening hours or beginning to close. The hordes of employees sleeping in overcrowded bunkhouses are leaving or have left.
The crowds of cruise passengers who have filled the streets since April, wearing lanyards emblazoned with the names of their ships, have dwindled to a trickle. Soon, they will all be gone. Snow is visible on the nearby mountains.
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11/10/2026 - 07:08
Former US secretary of state says most nations are ‘stumbling along’ while Beijing has ‘hugely accelerated’
Cop31 live – latest updates
China is leading the world in moving away from fossil fuels, and the rest of the globe – including the US – must now follow, the former US secretary of state John Kerry has told the Guardian, as Cop watchers wonder exactly how China is going to approach this year’s climate summit.
As Cop31 opens – this year the climate conference is in Turkey – there is plenty of speculation about whether China will finally step into the leadership role that it has long avoided. In its latest “five-year plan” adopted in March 2026, China for the first time pledged to “actively participate in and lead global climate governance”. Cop31 could provide the first indications Beijing is ready to put that rhetoric into action, something it has historically been reluctant to do.
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11/10/2026 - 02:57
Host Turkey celebrates new oilfields as UN climate summit prepares to host world leaders from more than 90 countries
We’ve just heard from Patricia Espinosa, the former UN climate boss (succeeded by Simon Stiell) and now we are hearing from former US secretary of state and climate ambassador, John Kerry.
Kerry has congratulated Brazil for keeping the fossil fuel transition issue alive, and the room has erupted in cheers.
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11/10/2026 - 01:45
In today’s newsletter: As global leaders gather in Turkey for the UN climate summit, both doubts and hope surround what the annual talks can achieve
Good morning. After another year of unprecedented droughts, floods and wildfires driven by human-caused global heating, 91 heads of government will meet tomorrow in Turkey to discuss the climate crisis. They will do so against a backdrop of global instability and conflict.
But as high-ranking officials and civil society campaigners settle in for a fortnight of speeches, protests and labyrinthine negotiations at the UN’s 31st annual climate conference, Cop31, many are asking what the point is.
UK | Russell Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison on Monday after a judge praised his victims’ bravery and accused him of living “unhindered by the rules by which decent people live”.
US | Donald Trump, Elon Musk and prominent finance moguls have expressed their support for embattled Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, as the head of the world’s most valuable chip company faces an internal investigation over a romantic relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.
Russia | US officials said they would seek a “final end” to the war between Russia and Ukraine, beginning with trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday in the first substantive negotiations between the two countries since February.
Technology | Palantir lobbied a health minister to consider extending its AI technology into GP records, stretching its reach into the NHS in a way doctors fear could undermine trust with patients.
Climate | Soaring oil and gas prices following the war in Iran have encouraged people to look beyond fossil fuels, leading to an easing of climate-damaging carbon emissions this year.
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