The UN’s annual climate summit is traditionally characterized by arcane bureaucracy, dense policy discussions, and a pervasive sense of frustration. However, at this year’s gathering in the Mediterranean city of Antalya, host nation Turkey injected a surreal, Eurovision-style aesthetic into the proceedings, offering a jarring contrast to the gravity of the climate crisis.
During a high-octane opening ceremony, delegates were treated to a spectacle that included traditional folk dancers and an interpretive performance featuring a woman dressed as a shrub and a troupe entangled in a costume of plastic waste. The highlight, however, was a song titled Let’s Cop. With lyrics such as “Bring down the heat, make it drop. One world, one call, let’s Cop,” the track served as a bizarre, upbeat anthem for a conference struggling to find momentum.
When questioned about the origin of the song, the Turkish hosts confirmed that while the melody and lyrics were penned by a professional musician, the composition and production process relied on artificial intelligence. This technological hybridity reflects the strange atmosphere at Cop31, where high-production theatrics have struggled to mask the underlying lack of substantive progress on critical issues, such as phasing out fossil fuels and supporting climate-vulnerable nations.
As the conference approaches its final week, the disparity between the ceremonial pageantry and the geopolitical reality has become a focal point for critics. Using the familiar scoring style of the Eurovision Song Contest to assess the summit’s performance so far yields a harsh verdict.
Turkey and Australia, the joint hosts of the event, are both major fossil fuel consumers and are currently expanding their extraction operations even as the summit unfolds. For this glaring inconsistency, observers have awarded them nul points. Similar scores have been applied to the broader international failure to reduce emissions at a pace necessary to prevent climate breakdown, with the mere mention of ending the fossil-fuel era remaining politically sensitive.
The situation is further complicated by the looming threat of what is projected to be the strongest recorded El Niño event. This climatic shift is expected to leave millions facing severe drought, flooding, and displacement. Despite these stakes, climate finance mechanisms designed to protect poorer, exposed nations remain woefully insufficient, drawing further nul points from activists on the ground.
The political attendance at the summit has been equally underwhelming. The event has seen a sparse turnout among world leaders. Notable absences include Donald Trump, who has frequently denigrated renewable energy technologies, as well as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, the latter of whom opted to attend an AI conference in Ireland. The lack of top-tier political representation has led some to offer a ironic cinq points for the creativity behind these absences.
As Cop31 continues through next Friday, the contrast between the upbeat rhythm of Let’s Cop and the sobering reality of the environmental data remains stark. For the activists assembled in Antalya, the pressure is on for delegates to move past the spectacle. Without concrete commitments to accelerate the energy transition and deliver the promised financial support for vulnerable regions, the song risks being remembered not as a unifying call to action, but as a hollow performance in the face of an unfolding catastrophe.
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