Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to rise tonight at adjournment proceedings to revisit a question I asked on November 20, 2017. It was related to an event that has since passed, which was the Emmanuel Macron climate leaders summit that was held in Paris.
However, let me move on to the point I want to raise tonight, which relates to the Prime Minister's answer to me, which was entirely favourable. What he said was, “I know that by working together, we will achieve our international commitments as laid out in the Paris agreement.” What I want to revisit this evening with the House is what we are to understand our international commitments to be, as laid out in the Paris Agreement.
What I find in the day-to-day press and conversations in this place is a conflating of the current target for carbon reductions that the Government of Canada is using as our current goal, as though it were absolutely consistent with the Paris Agreement. Now, of course the current target to which the new Liberal government, which is not that new but the Liberal government since 2015, has ascribed to is the target of 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. The government knows well that target predates the Paris Agreement being negotiated, because it was negotiated in December 2015 and this is the Government of Canada's target from May 2015. It was tabled by former Conservative environment minister Leona Aglukkaq.
At the time, it was decried as one of the weakest targets in the industrialized world. In fact, our current Minister of Environment and Climate Change described it at one point as being the floor, and that we would certainly do better than that. It was less than 12 months later that the floor became the ceiling, and this is now our target.
However, to understand why it really matters to pay attention to the Paris Agreement, we have to look at where Canada did show leadership, and that was in advancing our target for all countries globally. We must ensure that our reductions of greenhouse gases are sufficiently aggressive to hold global average temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, and certainly below two degrees. In looking at why 1.5 degrees matters, it matters critically and urgently, and I say this in no way as an exaggeration or hyperbole. It matters for the survival of human civilization.
It may even matter for the survival of the species that we achieve an equilibrium of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such that we can adapt to those changes in climate change that we can no longer avoid. It is a question of odds. The odds matter. We are now almost in a game of Russian roulette. If we lose 1.5 degrees as our goal, if it goes to two, or worse to three or four, we are increasing the odds with every increase in global warming of catastrophic events such as, for instance, losing the western Antarctic ice sheet.
Because it sits on land instead of the melting ice in our Arctic, which does not affect sea level rise, if we lose the western Antarctic ice sheet, that has an impact of an eight-metre sea level rise in Canada. That is information from the University of Toronto's study called the GRACE project under Professor Dick Peltier. That is a huge impact. We have to do everything in our power to hold our temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Worse risks are if we lose all the permafrost in our Arctic, if it all melts, that releases four times more greenhouse gases than everything since before the industrial revolution. That could effect human extinction.
I ask to hon. government to please consider what our Paris target is, and how we are going to meet it.