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ANTALYA, Turkey — “Anything is possible if you believe,” croons Turkish pop megastar Tarkan in his theme song for this year’s global COP31 climate conference. Attendees appear to have taken his words to heart. The Antalya summit marks the first climate talks since the United Nations told the world global warming would soon exceed 1.5C, effectively burying the totemic Paris Agreement target that has steered COP negotiations for more than a decade. Yet leaders here are straining to keep the goal on life support. “We are on course to overshoot the 1.5 degree target, and every fraction of a degree matters. So we must double down,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her speech to fellow leaders on Wednesday. “Let’s show that the fight for 1.5C is not over,” Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands told leaders. Even before the talks began, Danish Climate Minister Samira Nawa told POLITICO her country’s priority at COP31 was “to push for keeping the 1.5C target in the heart of global climate ambitions.” Other leaders and ministers, reviving slogans from COPs past, have exhorted their colleagues to “keep 1.5 alive” or ensure the target remains “within reach.” But scientists say that dream is over. The U.N. last month said that, even if countries dramatically slash planet-warming emissions starting right now, the best outcome would be a rise in global temperatures of 1.8 degrees. If they also deploy vast amounts of carbon removal tech to clean up the atmosphere, there’s a chance of getting back to 1.5 degrees after surpassing it — in theory. In reality, though, greenhouse gas emissions are still rising and the carbon-hoovering technologies needed to achieve that reversal are unproven at scale. The risk The collective ambition of national climate plans, already insufficient before the U.N.’s announcement, is even weaker than projected last year. Countries that have been among the strongest proponents of meeting the 1.5-degree target are watering down efforts to achieve it. But at the same time, many countries (and climate scientists) fear that publicly dumping the rhetoric around 1.5C will open the door to weakening global ambitions even further. Highlighting other possible targets, such as the 1.8C mentioned by the U.N., would be a “slippery slope,” warned one European climate negotiator. Johan Rockström speaks at an event in Berlin on May 9, 2025. | Sebastian Reuter/Getty Images for Billie Eilish and Support+Feed Present: OVERHEATED Berlin “I do not support the political messaging of keeping 1.5C alive — but on the other hand, I don’t want to lose it,” said Johan Rockström, a leading climate scientist and director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Politicians, when they say that, may naively think that we somehow still are on this linear, incremental journey that can simply take us to safety, which is not the case,” he added. “On the other hand, if we scientifically criticize it, the risk is that they do indeed say: ‘OK, let’s just drop it and aim for 2 degrees instead,’ which would be a big mistake.” Beyond symbolism For island nations already losing land and livelihoods to rising oceans, the 1.5 degree target is not merely symbolic. It represents their very survival. “Our response to the threat of overshoot must be overwhelming, or the world we know is over,” said Heine, the Marshall Islands president. “Overshoot means waves eating away our shores, flooding that destroys towns, schools, hospitals. It destroys our land and ocean.” The temperature target was not chosen arbitrarily. It represents the level of warming scientists say the planet can endure before the heat trapped in the atmosphere unleashes exponentially greater dangers. In the Paris accord, countries vowed to limit warming to below 2 degrees and “ideally” 1.5 degrees. The second target has become so dominant that the International Court of Justice last year declared it the primary goal. A group of developed and highly vulnerable nations, known as the High Ambition Coalition, have called for a credible response to the overshoot as one key COP31 outcome. “There is no way we can lose that anchor, out of our moral responsibility toward the people who have contributed the least and are the most impacted,” said Christiana Figueres, who headed the U.N. climate body when the Paris Agreement was adopted. Words vs. action But promises have not aligned with reality. “Leaders, and in particular those from developed countries, cannot keep expanding fossil fuel production while claiming to be committed to 1.5 degrees,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders in his opening speech on Wednesday. Yet immediately after his speech, leaders did just that. Chris Bowen speaks during COP31 in Antalya, Turkey on Nov. 11, 2026. | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images Australia, COP31 co-hosts with Turkey, is expanding investments in coal and natural gas, even as its Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen urges leaders in Antalya to act with “urgency, solidarity and resolve.” “With every minute that we fail to achieve the targets set out in the Paris Agreement, the risks and costs we face continue to grow,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Two days earlier, he had celebrated the discovery of two new oil fields. “The science is clear. Breaching 1.5 isn’t where we down tools and give up,” Katie White, the U.K.’s climate minister, said in response to the U.N. findings. White promised COP31 was the place to double down on action — but a day later, her own department approved a major natural gas project in the North Sea. Meanwhile the United States, the largest polluter in world history, has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and is no longer part of COP talks. Donald Trump’s abandonment of efforts to address global warming has left a large gap in the world’s collective efforts to cut emissions. There’s always next year Tina Stege, the Marshall Islands’ climate envoy, acknowledged the difficulty of the challenge. But she was unbending. “That’s not a reason to not do everything that we absolutely can,” she told reporters. “Every country that showed up at this talk to do the work needs to do that work and more.” Doing more means ramping up clean electrification and alternative fuels, say experts. It also means dramatically curbing short-term climate pollutants, such as methane. That’s emerging as a possible response to the overshoot declaration in the final agreement from this year’s negotiations, according to the European diplomat cited above. “If we cut methane by nearly half by 2030, we could avoid almost 0.3 degrees of warming by the 2040s and save 250,000 lives every year,” said Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, on Wednesday. “This buys us the time to get back to the 1.5 degrees.” The politics are tricky. Even as technological advances have allowed for better detection of the potent pollutant, the U.S. and Europe have weakened regulations aimed at curbing methane emissions. Mottley was adamant nonetheless that flagging global ambitions were no reason to give up. “I call for a global movement: 1.5 billion voices for 1.5 degrees,” she said. “We need to do this before we meet at COP32 next year. … Make 1.5 impossible to ignore on the planet Earth.”

BRUXELLES — De grandes villes européennes font pression pour que l’UE interdise la vente de filtres pour cigarettes. Elles dénoncent des embouts en plastique n’ayant aucun avantage en matière de santé et représentant la principale source de déchets urbains. Bruxelles, Munich, Dublin et Gênes font partie des municipalités qui ont rejoint la campagne “No (Plastic) Filter”, une initiative soutenue par la mairie de La Haye et par le gouvernement néerlandais, ainsi que par d’autres villes, mais aussi des autorités chargées de la gestion de l’eau et des associations écologistes. Elles affirment que le principe inscrit dans le droit européen de “responsabilité élargie du producteur” — des règles obligeant les fabricants de tabac à prendre en charge les coûts de gestion des déchets — n’a pas permis de réduire la pollution causée par les filtres des cigarettes et qu’une interdiction totale s’impose. “Les mégots de cigarette représentent pas moins de 30% de tous les détritus dans la ville de Bruxelles. Non seulement ces déchets dégradent notre paysage urbain, mais leur ramassage fait peser une charge extraordinaire sur nos équipes de nettoyage”, a pointé Anas Ben Abdelmoumen, conseiller municipal chargé de la propreté publique, auprès de POLITICO. Plusieurs autres villes de Belgique, d’Allemagne, de Tchéquie, de Hongrie et de Lituanie ont également rejoint cette campagne, qui intervient alors que l’Union européenne procède à la révision de deux textes législatifs majeurs susceptibles d’aboutir à l’interdiction des filtres des cigarettes — ou du moins du plastique qu’ils contiennent. La révision de la directive sur les produits du tabac par la Commission européenne est l’occasion d’interdire les filtres des cigarettes, estiment les membres de la campagne. S’ils échouent par ce biais, ils pourraient se rabattre sur la révision à venir de la directive sur les plastiques à usage unique pour interdire le plastique dans les filtres. L’Organisation mondiale de la Santé est elle aussi en faveur de l’interdiction ou de la suppression progressive des filtres, affirmant qu’ils ne présentent aucun avantage pour la santé. “Le filtre de cigarette est l’objet le plus souvent jeté dans l’espace public, il contient du plastique, il est à l’origine d’une pollution environnementale toxique et engendre des coûts considérables pour les collectivités locales et la société. De plus, le filtre ne rend pas le tabagisme moins nocif”, a argumenté Karl Beerenfenger, responsable de la campagne et membre de l’ONG néerlandaise Fair Resource Foundation. “C’est un produit trompeur, l’une des plus grandes escroqueries de l’histoire récente. Le filtre de cigarette n’aurait jamais dû être mis sur le marché.” L’industrie du tabac affirme toutefois que les filtres ont bel et bien une utilité sur le plan sanitaire. “Il n’existe pas de cigarette sans danger, avec ou sans filtre”, a énoncé Nathan Jones, responsable de la stratégie réglementaire européenne chez British American Tobacco. “Cependant, des études montrent que les filtres contribuent à réduire l’exposition à certaines substances toxiques et nous aident à respecter la législation européenne régissant les émissions des cigarettes. S’il existait une alternative viable et déployable à grande échelle, nous l’utiliserions, mais il n’y en a pas.” Le pollueur par excellence A La Haye, les coûts liés au nettoyage des mégots de cigarette sont estimés à environ 2 millions d’euros par an, selon la maire adjointe de la ville, Isabelle Broeders. “De notre point de vue, l’évaluation de la directive sur les produits du tabac représente une occasion importante d’[interdire les filtres des cigarettes]. Nous plaidons en faveur d’une interdiction de tous les filtres des cigarettes, quel que soit le matériau utilisé”, a détaillé Isabelle Broeders à POLITICO. La plupart des filtres des cigarettes sont fabriqués à partir d’acétate de cellulose, un type de plastique d’origine végétale qui se décompose difficilement. Il existe des alternatives biodégradables, mais elles ne sont pas largement utilisées. Les fabricants ont fait pression pour que l’acétate de cellulose soit classé comme un produit durable et biodégradable, et qu’il soit exempté de la directive sur les plastiques à usage unique. Le lobby Tobacco Europe s’est opposé à l’éventualité d’une restriction des filtres en plastique par la Commission, espérant que l’UE se concentre plutôt sur “la sensibilisation, l’application effective des règles contre les déchets sauvages et la mise en œuvre proportionnée de la REP [responsabilité élargie du producteur], tout en favorisant l’innovation afin de proposer des alternatives viables à terme”. Mais Bruxelles et La Haye sont toutes deux convaincues que le simple fait d’interdire le plastique présent à l’intérieur du filtre ne suffirait pas. “Autoriser des alternatives au plastique crée une faille dangereuse : les fabricants pourraient introduire de nouveaux matériaux qui échappent aux définitions techniques du plastique, tout en restant pratiquement aussi nocifs, persistants dans l’environnement et préjudiciables à la propreté publique”, a soulevé Anas Ben Abdelmoumen. Le gouvernement néerlandais, quant à lui, affirme qu’il se concentre sur les plastiques présents dans les filtres des cigarettes dans le cadre de la révision de la directive sur les plastiques à usage unique. “Si cette approche s’avérait infructueuse, cet objectif pourrait également être atteint par le biais de la [directive sur les produits du tabac]”, a indiqué un porte-parole à POLITICO. Selon Yogi Hendlin, philosophe de l’environnement et chercheur en santé publique à l’université Erasmus de Rotterdam, les filtres constituent une “prothèse fixée à l’extrémité de la cigarette” dont les gens pensent qu’elle retient “les éléments les plus nocifs de la fumée”. “Mais le filtre en lui-même n’apporte aucun bénéfice pour la santé”, a-t-il affirmé, et il a même été démontré qu’il augmentait le risque de cancer du poumon. “Il ne filtre aucune des substances cancérigènes, et ne fait guère mieux en matière de filtration. Il s’agit essentiellement d’un changement de couleur purement esthétique qui trompe votre esprit en lui faisant croire que vous êtes plus en sécurité que vous ne l’êtes réellement.” Yogi Hendlin a évoqué une affaire judiciaire américaine marquante de 2006, dans laquelle il avait été établi que les fabricants de tabac avaient induit les fumeurs en erreur en commercialisant des cigarettes “light” et “à faible teneur en goudron” comme des produits moins nocifs. Cet article a d’abord été publié par POLITICO en anglais, puis a été édité en français par Jean-Christophe Catalon.

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