I'm going to say a couple of things.
The first thing to know is that the projections for the future, what's going to happen over the next many decades, are uncertain. The choices that people make are the number one driver of that uncertainty. This is data that comes straight out of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I can pass along a figure, if people would like.
Which scenario we're going to be in and how high our emissions are going to be are really up to individual people. It's up to governments, but the choices we make about the emissions we put up into the atmosphere and how much the planet is going to warm are the number one thing controlling what our future is going to be.
Some of the biggest risks that come with future climate change are that the more the planet warms, the greater the risk of some sort of run-on or cascading feedback events. Examples would be some really disastrous things like a slowdown of the ocean circulation, as Elizabeth May mentioned, or other sorts of severe impacts and run-on feedback events.
I will say that the risk of overturning the circulation in the Atlantic in this century is still fairly low. That is something that's debated. Sometimes there is a case of a debate from within the scientific community popping up in the media, and then you only hear parts of it. I don't want to say that the risk of it is exaggerated, but maybe the statistics that people present on the likelihood sometimes get pushed a little bit. It sounds a little bit more likely in the media than it does in a scientific meeting.
That doesn't change the fundamental issue here that the choices we make are determining the climate for many generations to come. Some of the molecules of CO2 that you put up in the atmosphere are still going to be there in 10,000 years. This is a really permanent decision we're making, and that's why it's so important to act early.