Hon. Tommy Banks:

Honourable senators, consideration of this bill is particularly cogent today, since the government has announced that the extent to which it has achieved its stated goals with respect to emissions is deficient in the order of 10 magnitudes.

There are two things that we can do if we set a goal and do not reach it. One is to reduce the goal, which is what the government has done today. The other thing is to better the efforts to achieve the goal in all cases.

The intent of the bill before us is, as Senator Mitchell has told us, not very far from the stated intent of the government and its program. The intent expressed here is a little more ambitious, but its reach does not by far exceed the government's present grasp.

There are, though, still Canadians, including, I understand, some few members here in this place, who have and who express, from time to time, serious reservations and sometimes doubts about whether there is climate change at all and if there is, there is an anthropomorphic contribution to it. That is right, on the other side.

It is not possible to answer the question about whether we contribute to climate change with any certainty. We are all guessing on both sides of the question. Most of us are guessing on the basis of the best available scientific information with which we happen to agree, but we are all guessing. Everyone is guessing. It is sort of like betting at the track. Sometimes we place bets that have little to do with the past performance information on the racing form, or even on what we have heard from the touts. Sometimes we bet because we have a hunch, we like the colour of the horse or we just feel like betting against the odds.

What we do in respect of climate change, its mitigation or our adaptation to it, is very much like a bet. What we are betting on is the future of the world. We are betting on what it will be like, maybe not despite the conventional arguments of what it will be like for our children and grandchildren but what it will be like for us because some of the touts are saying that things are happening exponentially faster than anyone believed before. We are betting on our future.

I asked a couple of experienced bettors, racing buddies of mine who are inveterate bettors, to think of that question in terms of a straight up-and-down bet. I asked them to take into account the most extreme scenarios so as to make the choices more clear; no hedging, no quinella, no trifecta, a straight on-the-nose bet. Those guys do not fool around. These are people who sometimes literally bet the farm. These are people who understand odds and the real concept of risk. I will tell you what they said.

They looked at the worst predictions, the doom-and-gloom predictions, and put that as one factor. They then looked at the opposite of those, the extremes in each case, that all the bad predictions are wrong, that as it turns out, whatever problems there are, we are not causing them. They concluded that in order to make the right bet we do not need to know which of those outcomes is right. In order to make the right bet, we do not need to be certain about whether the tree huggers are right or the deniers are right. That is a good thing, if they are right, because we do not know.

I said to them that I do not understand how you can place a bet without at least believing in one of those two extreme outcomes. They said, "Do not be so impatient; we have not finished yet." They said that for us to make the right bet we need to consider those extreme possibilities so that we can make direct comparisons and make good choices, but since we cannot predict them with any certainty, and since they are outcomes and not causes, we have to look at other factors as well, but we do have to look at them.

For the purpose of their touting they looked at simple choices between two outcomes. One is that the whole argument about our causing climate change, to whatever degree, is false. The other is that it is true. Here it is key to understanding that no one knows for sure what the physical world will do. All reasonable people, on any side of any argument, must be prepared to acknowledge at some point that they might have made a mistake. The only people who do not change their minds are fools. There are two possibilities: one, humans contribute to climate change; or, two, they do not.

Now we come to the other part of the question, the part that has to do with what we do control, which is what we should or should not do, what actions we should or should not take. We do control those things. Again, there are two sides. We can take significant action, or we can take no significant action. Remember, we are dealing with the extremes of the outcome.

Therefore, we have four possible scenarios. The first is that we take significant action, but it was not needed; the second is that we take no significant action and it is a very good thing because it was not needed; the third is that we take action, and action was needed; the fourth is that we take no significant action, but we should have because action was needed.

Bet No. 1 is that we take significant action, and, as it turns out, all the panic was exaggerated and we are not contributing to the problem. What are the risks associated with that? It would be a colossal waste of money, and some of us are worried about increased taxation, overburdensome regulation, government sticking its nose into everything and, to go the whole way — and remember that we are talking extremes — massive layoffs caused by a huge economic downturn and stagnation caused by draconian regulations, spawning a recession, descending into a depression, leading to a global economic mess that would make what is going on now look like a walk in the park. That would be costly.

Let us look at Bet No. 2. That is the one in which we took no significant action and it turns out that we did not need to. That would be a good bet. We do nothing, and it turns out there was no need to do anything. What are the downsides of placing that bet? There are not any. What are the risks? None, as it turns out, that have anything to do with climate change. We win.

Let us look at Bet No. 3, the one in which we took significant action and it was a good thing we did because it turned out that the tree huggers were right. What are the risks of Bet No. 3? We still have all the costs, but in this bet those costs turned out to be wisely spent. We still had the economic disaster caused by that spending, but we saved the physical world. We can still live here. That is a reasonably positive outcome.

Look at Bet No. 4, where we took no significant action but we should have, because it turns out that the doomsayers were right. We have to look at the extremes here, too. The extremes in Bet No. 4 are really ugly. If the believers in human-caused climate change and its consequences are right and we make Bet No. 4, we are in real trouble. We would have disastrous situations everywhere — in the economic, political, social, environmental and public health spheres. There would be catastrophes across the board and on a global scale. This is the worst possible outcome and the highest possible risk. This would mean multi-metre rises in sea levels, warfare over potable water, drought, dying forests, social upheaval, floods, diminishment of arable lands — the works: famine, disease, fire, hurricanes, and total economic collapse. This risk makes Al Gore guilty of whitewashing and sugar-coating.

Therefore, we have Bets Nos. 1 and 4 as extremely negative, and Bets Nos. 2 and 3 as positive. Even if we do not like the extremes in these illustrations, even if we put in much more moderate factors and outcomes, the following advice from those touts will still apply. Our future will fall roughly into one of those four betting outcomes. Since we do not know whether or not our contributions to climate change are real, we cannot know which of those scenarios will come true. However, what we can know for sure is whether or not we will take significant action. We control that and we can know that.

It is like a lottery or a bet. We either buy Ticket A, in which we take significant action, or we buy Ticket B, in which we do not take significant action. If we buy Ticket A, we take significant action, and if we do that, what is the risk? We are risking global economic depression. That is the extreme. If it turns out that Ticket A was the right one, that we took significant action and it was needed, then the risk was worth it because, despite the depression, we still have a world that we can live in. If we bought Ticket A and we lose the bet and we did not need to put the world in economic depression because we are not contributing to climate change, then we have a global economic depression.

What is the risk if we buy Ticket B and do not take significant action? Of course, if we win that bet, if we are not big contributors to climate change and there is nothing to worry about, then we are all happy because we are not part of the problem, we did not have a depression, and everything is relatively okay. What is the downside if we lose that bet, or if we should have spent the money, if we should have put up with the inconvenience but did not, and the extreme worst happens? Then we have global economic depression, political catastrophe, social catastrophe, environmental catastrophe, health catastrophe, and on and on.

When we decide which of these bets we will make — which of these risks we will take — my horseracing friends would choose the bet that has the shortest list of worst-case scenarios. That is the list that only has one item on it: global economic depression. That is what we risk if we buy Ticket A, if we take action and it turns out to be unnecessary. On the other hand, the worst-case scenario if we buy Ticket B is a long list, and that makes it a bad bet. We cannot control what the earth will do, but we can control what we do. We can control the place on the table on which we will place our bet, the place that determines whether we take the one single worst-case scenario risk or whether we take the long list of worst-case scenario risks, the one that says we risk everything.

Do we choose or do we guess? The answer to that should be a no-brainer. We can live in this world if we lose our bet on Ticket A. It will not be fun, but we can survive if we lose that bet. However, none of us would want to live in the world that would result from our losing our bet on Ticket B, the easy bet, the do not take the most significant action ticket. That risk is just not worth it, and that is what this bill is about. It is about the choice we make in the only part of those scenarios that we can control, the question of whether or not we take significant action. That is what the horse race touts said, and that is why I will vote for this bill and why we should all vote for this bill.

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