Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  One could give a very long answer to that, but let me just tell you a small anecdote to help answer it. I gave a lecture on climate change to the final graduating class of humanists at Carleton University. At the end of it, one of the students said that, yes, this is a threat an

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Let me try to answer that and make a couple of points. First, the co-chairs of the IPCC Working Group I were Susan Solomon, who is an American, and Dahe Qin, who is Chinese and is actually the head of the China Meteorological Administration. Both of them are impeccably well-qual

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Let me just make a few comments. It's my own personal feeling that we won't be able to successfully tackle the issue of climate change if we regard it simply as an environmental issue. There is no doubt that it's an environmental issue, but it's a matter of how it's framed. I t

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  That's my view.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Thank you. I'll do my best. It's a very good question. As my colleagues have said, there's no getting away from the fact that over time we are going to have to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases, perhaps by as much as 60% and maybe even more. That depends very much on our

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  There are several indicators we have that if plotted on a graph over time do not give a linear slope. Dr. Peltier and Dr. Weaver mentioned the acceleration of the Greenland and Arctic ice shields. I talked about the decline of the Arctic sea ice. If you look even at something as

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'll add one small thing. About two or three years ago, Robert Socolow, a Princeton academic, wrote a paper arguing that we have the moment, that all the technologies we need to stabilize our emissions at today's levels to the middle of the century are at hand. What's required

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to duck that question, since I'm not an economist. The Stern report is 750 pages long, and I haven't been able to obtain a copy yet. I've read the report's executive summaries. Basically he says that it will probably be more costly to do nothing

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  First, as I've already said, the issue is climate change; it's not Kyoto. Kyoto is certainly a challenge for Canada, but it's a first step. I look at Kyoto as a direction, as an experiment to allow us to try different policy measures, an experiment to put in place certain incenti

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I can try to answer part of that, sir. The language on uncertainty on levels of competence was determined by the scientists. It's not a matter of taste; it's a matter of statistics, more than anything else, and of scientific judgment. I was in Paris, because I'm a member of th

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Sir, I'll try to answer your question. The first point I'd like to make is that the issue is climate change. This is a long-term issue. You need, as you rightly mentioned, short-, medium-, and long-term goals or targets. To strengthen this bill, you need such instruments as targe

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Thank you very much. Generally speaking, it's been very difficult to engage economists in the climate change debate. Some work has been done by several academics in Canada on the costs of reducing emissions and also of responding to the impacts. The problem for both of them is

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Thank you very much. Permit me to répondre en anglais. One of the things the IPCC Working Group I report is saying is that indeed there is inertia in the climate system. We are seeing impacts now and we can expect to see impacts continue for the next two, three, or possibly four

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'll try to answer that, if I may. Both are creatures of the United Nations. The IPCC was created by governments in about 1988 in order to provide them with authoritative information assessments on the state of knowledge of the science—and I use that word very broadly—of climate

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Chairman and members of this legislative committee, I'm grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today to share with you some of the main conclusions of the recently completed report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's W