Climate science says 1.5C is dead. No one wants to bury it.

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.