Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to everybody who's presented. You have all given very interesting presentations.
I want to focus on Environmental Defence Canada, and I want to thank you for coming to talk about climate change today. I don't think we can talk enough about it. I represent the north, and I see it first-hand every weekend, when I go home.
We already have forest fires burning in my part of the country. I live on the Mackenzie River and the water should be at fall levels instead of spring thaws. There's not much snow. So many things are changing. I drive on a road that is starting to be like a roller coaster because of the permafrost melting. It really brings a sense of urgency. For us, it's almost not fair because our part of the world is not developed yet and most of our communities don't have roads. Our greenhouse gas emissions are so small, but we're the ones being affected the most.
When I hear you say we have to do more to fight climate change, I'm just wondering if we can do enough. When we move forward, how do we make it work? How do we apply it fairly to all of the country? For us in the Northwest Territories, solar is not a good solution because half of the north is in darkness for a good many months. Wind is not a good option either because the props and everything else freeze up on us. When we start talking about nuclear, we've got a lot of concerns. We're starting to see improvements; mechanical batteries and graphite batteries are starting to improve.
We need to do more, but the big question is how do we get everybody to agree. How do we get everybody on the same page to move forward? As I said, even though we don't emit a lot of greenhouse gas, we're willing to do our share. We'd certainly love to get off diesel; we've committed to doing that. Anybody who has diesel generators would love to get off diesel. They're noisy, they're smelly and they're not reliable. I want to know how we get everybody on the same page. Will it be when we hit a crisis point, or can we get an agreement before then?