Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. As he said, the problem goes beyond sea levels rising by a metre or more.
We do not like to talk about the risk of going above 1.5° global average temperature increase. At the Paris negotiations, I sought out scientists to find out what we would tell people if they asked what the difference would be between 1.5° and 2°. The low-lying island states will not survive if we go above 1.5° and we will lose large chunks of the Arctic. We are basically playing Russian roulette by hanging on to land-based ice, such as the Greenland ice sheet or the western Antarctic ice shelf. If we lose either one of those, we would see an eight-metre sea level rise for each event. We do not know when that will occur. The Greenland ice shelf is ice on land. Arctic ice melting would not lead to a sea level rise but it would disrupt the climate globally. With ice on land we are playing Russian roulette with catastrophic levels of quite sudden loss of coastlines and major urban areas.
I would ask my friend for any comments he might have on the urgency of the crisis.