Madam Speaker, it is my honour this evening to take up a question I originally asked the Prime Minister on the subject of the Paris accord on climate change. I asked him if he was planning to attend the April 22 United Nations meeting at which the Paris accord would be open for signing. However, the second part of my question, which is still relevant, is whether we would be presenting more robust targets at that occasion.
It is entirely my pleasure to report that of course the Prime Minister did personally attend the United Nations General Assembly. It was a record breaker for the United Nations system that on the first day open for official signing of a treaty, for the first time ever, more than 174 countries signed on one day. It was wonderful that our Prime Minister and our Minister of Environment and Climate Change were both present. To give it context, there are 195 countries that have confirmed that they will be signing, so every country on earth is committed to this agreement.
A lot of people watching these debates may wonder what the Paris accord would accomplish. This is what I want to focus upon in the time remaining. It is either an agreement that is an enormous success, or it is a sham. I believe it will be an enormous success. However, in order to succeed in achieving the long-term target, which is to ensure that global average temperature rise does not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius—what they were before the industrialized revolution. In order to achieve that, we need to have very robust action plans from every government. The Secretary General of the United Nations, on that occasion of the signing ceremony in the UN General Assembly headquarters, said that the window of opportunity to avoid a rise of 1.5 degrees is closing very rapidly.
Crunching the numbers, as scientists do, they look at all of the targets. They are now referred to as intended nationally determined contributions, or INDC. They take the aggregate of all those targets, and assuming every country is going to meet its target, what is the impact? Do we avoid 1.5 degrees? Do we hold it to less than two degrees? The horrible truth is that the range of global average temperature increase takes us well past the danger zone and potentially into the area that scientists do not want to talk about—a runaway global warming, where the amount of anthropogenic warming triggers a non-stop warming effect globally. Planetary disaster and catastrophic impacts would ensue. The range, if every country achieves its targets, is 2.7 to 3.5 degrees Celsius global average temperature increase.
Currently, Canada's INDC is that left behind by the previous government, which is why I raised this with the Prime Minister and raise it again tonight with the parliamentary secretary. It is quite clear that Canada showed leadership at COP21 in Paris. Canada again showed leadership in signing on the opening day and in the Prime Minister's rather prominent role in that signing ceremony. Now we have to show leadership by withdrawing the INDC that is currently tabled, left by the previous government, of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. It is far weaker than that of our U.S. partners. The Barack Obama administration has an end date of 2025. It is my absolute contention and assertion, and in fact I am begging the government to change our target to coincide with that of the U.S. At least advance it to close by 2025. Then as the Paris agreement goes through global stock-taking, we will be reviewed in concert with the U.S.