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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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