Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by Dr. Peter Kalmas. He is a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

He is the author of The Book of Being, The Change, Live Well, and Spark, A Climate Revolution,

Dr. Keltlis, thank you so much for joining us with Carter Faird.

Well, thanks for having me. And I should say that I'm speaking on my own behalf. That's

always the disclaimer. And not on behalf of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Correct. Unfortunately. Yeah. So, okay, well, here, let's start with something you did write on your own behalf.

Recently in Newsweek, you had a column where you described the current United Nations Climate Summit, COP 28, as, in your words, a sick joke.

As a climate scientist, you said, I'm appalled, frustrated, disgusted, losing your faith in

humanity.

What led you to describe the current climate summit as a sick joke?

I mean, it's just so over the top, right?

This is supposed to be the international system for solving a global problem, which is global heating.

So we need an international system. We need a global system. If it's a global problem, we can't solve it effectively. We can't solve it rapidly without some sort of global mechanism for coordinating

that effort. And the cause, by far the main cause, is the fossil fuel industry. So about roughly

80% of global heating, we're about 1.3 degrees Celsius hotter than we should be on planet Earth

right now, is caused by fossil fuels.

And I say it's caused by the fossil fuel industry, and that's not a kind of not an illusion.

That's not like unintentional because the fossil fuel industry has been spreading disinformation

for about half the century.

They've been colluding very systematically hiring some of the best lobbyists and PR people

in the world, spending billions and billions of dollars, forming kind of systems of oil major,

...