As world gripped by climate emergency, COP31’s empty chairs signal low ambitions

There's a climate emergency gripping our planet, but on the fourth day of COP31, the UN chief tried to boost enthusiasm to keep momentum going. We have not lost the battle. We will not be able to keep it at 1.5, but we still keep it below 1.5 at the end of the century. So this is not the moment to surrender. This is the moment to fight back. It was a wake-up call that rang a bit hollow in a sparsely filled conference room. No Donald Trump, no Xi Jinping and no Emmanuel Macron. A sign of low expectations as many heads of state skipped this year's summit. Despite hosting the event, Turkey's president celebrated the discovery of new oil fields on the opening day of his COP While his energy minister announced plans to explore oil and gas projects with Venezuela in an economy that is otherwise heavily reliant on coal to generate electricity. We need a lot of electricity, and electrification is at the center, but we need to produce this electricity. We would like to make it with renewables, we would like to make it with nuclear, but of course to develop nuclear power plants, it's a huge amount of finance required. One leader who bucked the trend and did show up, to a thunderous applause, was Brazil's President Lula. Deforestation in Brazil is at its lowest level in 40 years. But the country is still a major oil producer, which is reaching historic highs.