COP28: 'Turn off the hose of emissions and invest in nature'
Climate scientists say global warming can be held in check if we curb carbon emissions even further over the coming decades.
It is the first day of the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 - two weeks of talks in Dubai with an appeal for delegates to turn promises into action. The president of the summit Sultan al-Jaber urged the thousands of participants to rise above their differences and restore faith in multilateralism.
The choice of host nation has been controversial: The United Arab Emirates is one of the world's top-ten oil producing nations, and the government appointed host of the conference is the chief executive of the state-owned oil company.
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is the chief scientist of The Nature Conservancy, an environmental organisation: so what does she make of the place where the summit is being held?
"It is being hosted by a country that's primary source of income is the cause of this whole problem: fossil fuels."
"If you think of the atmosphere as a swimming pool and the water is the heat-trapping gases, we stuck a giant hose in the pool at the start of the Industrial Revolution and we've been turning it up every year. That's our fossil fuel emissions. "
"We have to turn off the hose... and invest in nature [which] could take up to a third of our carbon emissions out of the atmosphere."
(Pic: Attendees arrive for the opening COP28 climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Credit: Reuters)
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