Brian Lear on WNYC, now our Climate Story of the Week, which we've been doing every Tuesday

on the show all this year. Today and next Tuesday we'll be talking about developments

at the COP28 Climate Conference now taking place in Dubai.

COP stands for a conference of the parties, that's the parties to a 1994 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

This is the 28th follow-up conference,

conference of the parties, COP28.

It started last week and runs through next Tuesday.

We're going to start today's climate story of the week in a different kind of way

than usual. The biggest controversy at COP28 so far is something the president of the conference

said. He is Sultan Ahmed Al-Jabber of the 28 he said phasing out fossil fuels isn't scientifically necessary and would send

humanity back into caves. Interesting giving his role given his role as

president of the conference obviously he later said he'd been taken out of context

and sought to put it differently.

So we're going to give you plenty of context,

partly because it's so interesting to listen to.

Maybe you've heard a brief snippet of his remarks on the news,

but we have the luxury of time on this show.

So we're going to play for you four minutes of the remarkable exchange that made these headlines.

This is from a COP28 session with Salt Mount Jober and the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, who's attending the conference, Mary

Robinson speaks first.

I think one urgent message has come through in the entire day of the summit. I've heard it at every session I think and that is that we're in an absolute crisis that is hurting women more than anyone women and and children, the elderly, those with disability, etc.

And those most vulnerable.

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