Cop31 begins on Monday 9 November. olding a climate conference under the presidency of one coal-obsessed country might be regarded as a misfortune for the planet –sharing it between two starts to look provocative. But at this year’s Cop31 UN climate summit in Antalya, coal exporter Australia and coal consumer Turkey will be trying to shift the focus away from dirty fossil fuels and towards clean electricity, with a target on the table to meet 35% of final energy demand from electricity by 2035.

Will they succeed? The geopolitical outlook for Cop31 is worse than for almost any recent “conference of the parties” under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza are destabilising global alliances, an unpredictable White House is sowing economic uncertainty and AI is threatening to unleash digitised chaos.

But with an El Niño weather system supercharged by fossil fuels already wreaking havoc and yet to peak, the climate is showing where the real potential for earthbound catastrophe lies. For the next fortnight, Down to Earth will bring you twice-weekly updates from the Cop31 negotiations plus, when the gavel finally comes down, a final assessment of what progress has been made – and where negotiations have fallen short in Antalya. But first, this week’s most important reads.