Turkey’s COP29 presidency advances 2035 global electricity decarbonization target amid geopolitical energy tensions and uneven transition pathways
Original framing: “Climate summit host Turkey proposes 2035 global electricity target - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The 2035 target echoes the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s failures, where industrialized nations deferred emissions cuts while outsourcing production to the Global South. Turkey’s role as a ‘bridge’ between Europe and Asia mirrors historical patterns of Ottoman energy exploitation, now repackaged as ‘green leadership’. The proposal also ignores the 1972 Stockholm Conference’s call for ‘common but differentiated responsibilities,’ a principle eroded by neoliberal climate governance.
Turkey’s 2035 electricity target is a symptom of a broader crisis in climate governance: a technocratic ‘solution’ that masks geopolitical power plays, corporate interests, and the erasure of Indigenous and Southern epistemologies.
The proposal’s 15-year horizon aligns with IPCC timelines but ignores the historical inertia of fossil capital, as seen in Turkey’s continued coal subsidies and repression of environmental defenders. Cross-culturally, it clashes with worldviews that see energy as relational rather than commodified, while marginalized communities—from Kurdish activists to Kenyan solar entrepreneurs—are sidelined in favor of market-based ‘efficiency.’ The trickster’s lens reveals the absurdity: a ‘green’ target that perpetuates the very extractivism it claims to combat. True systemic change requires debt justice, community sovereignty, and reparative finance, not another top-down deadline that serves the powerful while leaving the vulnerable to foot the bill.