The issue of math and the costs and economics have certainly been raised by Mr. Paton, but also by others. Mr. Kovacs was talking about the insurance industry and others who are also quite alarmed about where we're going if we don't act.
It's not that we're not concerned about manufacturing; of course, we are. But at the same time, we realize that if we don't have an economically sustainable environmental policy at work that is also in partnership with world economies and world leadership--the first step is the Kyoto Protocol--then we will not have an economy in the future.
I was speaking just yesterday with a member of Parliament from Tanzania who was talking about the problems with a light shortage in her country. I was a bit confused, because I was talking about the melting of the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro, but she was talking about the fact that the hydro power they use for their electricity is drying up. There is no more water in their lakes, no more water in their rivers, and it's having a dramatic impact on Africa.
So the actions we take in Canada have an impact around the globe, and that's what we're not seeing, the devastating cost, not just to our environment but to economies throughout the world. If we, the rich countries of the world, are not prepared to start living up to our obligations, how are these other countries, who are receiving the negative impacts of our lack of decisiveness, going to be able to manage this?
There is a cost, but the question is, where do you measure the cost? You can measure the cost right now, just one specific sector, or you can measure the cost in terms of the impact it will have on the whole country within the next ten years, or what impact it already has around the world. There's a huge financial cost, in the billions of dollars, maybe the trillions of dollars, and we have to look at it. It's not just the immediate costs we have to be focused on.
It's a comment, but maybe somebody else would like to add to it.