Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his impassioned speech this afternoon. I would like to wish him and his family a merry Christmas, and of course, I express my condolences on the passing of his brother.
I was raised in a Catholic household and went to church. I since have not attended church. I have taken a slightly different path personally, but I attended catechism, and I remember Genesis 2:15 told us that people were put on this planet to take care of Planet Earth.
I am also a big fan of Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian who wrote a book called Saving Us. It is a book about how to communicate about climate change and how to communicate the necessity of humans to act, given the impact we have had on our planet, through burning fossil fuels. It is about how to have those conversations, particularly when we come together over the holiday season. If anybody out there is looking forward to getting together with their family, but maybe is not looking forward to having discussions about politics or climate change, I would encourage them to look up Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe. She is brilliant.
I also know that foundational to Christian ethic is that we ought to all support vulnerable people. In my view, Jesus was undoubtedly a democratic socialist. He cared about people first and foremost. I would just remind my colleague that he was on his way to Bethlehem because Mary and Joseph were tax compliant. They were going for the census because they believed in helping other people.
Statistics tell us very clearly that evangelical Protestants and Catholics are among the people who care about climate change the least. Could the member change my mind? Could he tell me that he believes in climate change, and that he believes we ought to act to lower our emissions and to fight for our planet because it is the only one that God ever created for us?