{"id":25608,"date":"2026-11-11T18:17:21","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T18:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=25608"},"modified":"2026-11-11T18:17:21","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T18:17:21","slug":"what-to-know-about-this-years-un-climate-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=25608","title":{"rendered":"What to know about this year\u2019s UN climate talks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Outside the formal negotiations, COP31 president Murat Kurum, Turkey\u2019s environment minister, is spearheading a side agenda, including two informal initiatives that will be worth watching. These wouldn\u2019t be part of the official agreement text, but countries could sign on to signal support.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
One is a pledge to make AI more sustainable; this is almost comically squishy, even as voluntary COP pledges go. The text includes explicit wording that it creates no new obligations for countries, so don\u2019t expect anything resembling enforcement there.<\/p>\n
The COP leadership is also pushing to make electricity a larger part of member countries\u2019 energy use. Today, only about 23% of global energy is used in the form of electricity. Fossil fuels, like gasoline in vehicles or natural gas for heating, make up the bulk of the rest. Shifting to more electricity use, and relying on cleaner sources for that electricity, could help drive down emissions. The new pledge\u2019s target is for electricity to make up 35% of total energy consumption by 2035.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With leadership billing this as an \u201cimplementation COP,\u201d it would be great to see some real, tangible progress on the global challenge of addressing climate change. I\u2019m not expecting anything groundbreaking, but we\u2019ll be tuned in to see what the final agreement shapes up to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This article is from The Spark,<\/em> MIT Technology Review\u2019s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday,<\/em> sign up here.\u00a0<\/em>