Thank you very much.
It's a real pleasure for me to be with you today. I am speaking to you from Tiohtá:ke on the unceded territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka.
I am the international climate diplomacy manager with the Climate Action Network.
Yesterday the intergovernmental panel released a groundbreaking report, the third out of three major reports. This one specifically focused on the mitigation of climate change.
The report says that, without a doubt, we have what's necessary to cut emissions by half everywhere. It also says that things have radically changed in the past eight years. We know climate impacts are more expensive and are hitting us harder. Governments and decision-makers globally face a historic test. Scientists agree on the following: Either we use all of the resources we have to finance and resource this transition, or we can decide to burn our hope for a climate-safe future.
The most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, contains the most comprehensive list of solutions ever prepared. We can cut greenhouse gas emissions, or GHGs, by half, which is consistent with a future in which we limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To achieve that goal, we must eliminate fossil energy subsidies because that can help us reduce global GHG emissions by as much as 10% by 2030.
So far in this committee, we have had a discussion about regulatory reform, looking at the types of supports that in previous years the Government of Canada has provided to the oil and gas sector through direct and public finance support through Export Development Canada.
I want to propose a new kind of discussion, one that looks at the transformational potential of the decisions around shifting Canada's financial flows. We have been talking a lot about fossil fuel subsidies from a policy reform perspective, but this IPCC report actually talks about radically changing the conversation on subsidies. It's not just about reforming regulatory policy. Phasing out subsidies represents one of the most important ways to finance our way out of this climate mess. Phasing out subsidies means giving ourselves the power to imagine what we can do with these funds if they can help us build a pathway of economic, climate and energy security.
The IMF has previously estimated fossil fuel subsidies totalling $5.2 trillion U.S. or 6.5% of global GDP in 2017, compared with the $2.4 trillion U.S. annually used for energy investments over the next decade to limit global warming to 1.5ºC. Canada is a major fossil fuel subsidies contributor. It's part of those top five G20 countries that have given up to $63 billion per year in international public finance for oil, gas and coal projects.
We know, based on this IPCC report, that climate finance flows need to increase by a factor of four to eight in developing countries and two to five in developed countries. Now, this environment committee—