The climate elites’ farce at COP31

From CFACT

By Craig Rucker

CFACT’s Marc Morano confronted John Kerry about his hypocrisy outside the COP

The climate establishment has spent years insisting its agenda is popular, urgent, and non-negotiable. Yellow Vest protests in France, tractor blockades by Dutch farmers, and anti-Net-Zero demonstrations across England have said otherwise.

At COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, the same people who once treated climate change as the defining moral crisis of the age are discovering that publics on both sides of the Atlantic have other priorities. Rather than adjust, they are rewriting the recent midterms and doubling down on the old script.

John Kerry told the gathering here at COP31, unbelievably, that the midterms showed Americans had made “climate change and its exigencies a voting issue.” Hogwash.

The claim does not survive contact with the record. The truth of the matter is Democrats spent the campaign cycle downplaying the subject.

Energy expert Michael Shellenberger noted in a post on X on November 9th that the share of House and Senate Democratic press releases mentioning climate change fell from 28 percent in 2021 to 2 percent in the first five months of this year.

The House Democrats’ 2020 climate report used the phrase “climate change” a whopping 500 times; their September 2026 report, on the other hand, used it a paltry 22 times. Instead of climate, candidates talked about grocery bills, electricity prices, and affordability. The electorate responded. Kerry’s version is convenient fiction.

The goings on at the COP31 summit undercut the moralizing. CNN surprisingly highlighted one such case of hypocrisy. It counted 93 private flights into Antalya — more than the 66 that reached last year’s event in Brazil. It even noted one Nigerian businessman arrived on a flight that emitted more carbon dioxide than an ordinary person produces in six years.

Inside the venue, while there were some vegan options which few partook of, the vast bulk of venues featured red-meat kebabs, lamb, and other meaty Turkish favs. Complimentary water came in carbonated bottles; each opened cap releases a few grams of CO₂. The contrast is typical at these UN shindigs. The same delegates who lecture ordinary people about meat, cars, and flights arrived by private jet and dined as they pleased.

A side event I attended on “climate democracy” also was revealing. UN experts described how to bring the public on board for net-zero living — which of course means less meat, fewer combustion engines, more transit and bicycles. Despite it being about getting public input, audience questions were not taken.

There was no discussion of what should be done with people who prefer their cars, their diets, and their own judgment. The omission was telling. When persuasion fails, the residual options are social pressure and regulation. Recent history with pandemic mandates showed how quickly those options expand.

CFACT’s presence produced the usual mix of outreach and resistance. An interview with an Angolan television station allowed me to make a straightforward case for energy realism. Kudos to them. But a longer exchange with a Time magazine crew rendered a different result.

It was civil but closed. Basic points on temperature records, disaster trends, and the physical limits of intermittent power were acknowledged by the reporters … and then set aside. The reporters did take our cards and said they ‘might’ follow up in Washington. I’m not holding my breath. The pattern is familiar: Facts are noted, then subordinated to the preferred narrative.

To our surprise, we crossed paths with Kerry as we left the grounds. He was moving quickly with an entourage. Marc Morano asked what message he might have for Donald Trump. Kerry’s reply was “Why aren’t you here?” Handlers closed in and ended the exchange.

Official announcements stayed inside the established frame. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank announced a record $1.6 billion climate-policy package for Türkiye to support its Climate Law, an emissions-trading system, renewable targets, and related measures.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, delivering what was described as his final COP address, said fossil fuels “must go the way of the dinosaurs,” observed that dinosaurs had no lobby, and called for taxing oil-company profits. He noted that emissions reached new highs in 2025 and that the past four years were the hottest on record. The prescription remains the same: more finance, faster phase-outs, and continued pressure to eliminate fossil fuels regardless of cost or reliability.

COP 31 is being presented as a summit of so-called “implementation.” What is being implemented, however, is insulation from energy realities being faced by households and businesses. American voters just ranked cost of living and energy reliability far above climate goals. The Antalya conference continues to treat these preferences as obstacles rather than constraints.