Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to see last week that Pope Francis met with major energy companies. He said that carbon pricing was essential to combatting climate change. He appealed to climate change deniers to listen to the science. He said, “For too long we have collectively failed to listen to the fruits of scientific analysis and “doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain..”.
Pope Francis is so focused on this, because the most vulnerable, the poorest among us are the most impacted by climate change. We need to take action. He was very clear that there needs to be price on pollution, that it can no longer be free to pollute, because we are paying the price. The people who are paying the price are the most vulnerable among us. That is a basic teaching of the church, that we need to be standing up for the most vulnerable, that we need to be working together to protect what he has called “our common home”.
Laudato Si, the encyclical of the Pope, is very clear about the need for us all to come together, which I hope this House will do. We need to come together to tackle climate change, to realize it can no longer be free to pollute, to understand that we need to do the hard work at home to meet our international obligations. We are all going to need to do more.