Madam Speaker, I thought I might share a little story about the nature of environmental destruction, environmental problems and ask the member to respond. It is really just a way of getting this little story on the record. I remember reading this about 20 years ago. It was trying to illustrate the nature of environmental problems. They are often geometric or exponential in nature.
The story goes that you have to imagine a lily pond which is being covered by lily pads at a certain rate over the course of 28 days. It starts with one lily pad on the first day, two lily pads on the second day, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, et cetera. The thing to remember in the covering of this pond with lily pads is that if this is a progression of pollution or environmental degradation, on the 27th day there is still half the lily pond uncovered.
It is very easy to believe on the 27th day or on the 26th day or on the 25th day that the people who are saying there is a problem are wrong, because they can look out over half of the lily pond and say “These people are Chicken Little. These people say that the sky is falling. These people are exaggerating. They want us to take unnecessary measures”. If they listen to that kind of advice in this story, when sitting on a lily pad on the 27th day they are saying there is no problem and on the next day boom, the entire pond is covered.
I ask members to consider whether or not this story is not constructive in some way. We do not know with respect to greenhouse gas emissions whether we are on the 27th day or the 26th or the 25th, but we are close. We are somewhere in the twenties and it is incumbent upon us to act.