Why Ontario needs a 21st Century vision for energy

When I first arrived in Toronto, after several months out of the country, I thought I had returned to the land of enlightenment. The recycling program was much more effective and extensive than anything I had seen in London, England, and the Ontario government was busily advertizing its new Green Energy Act, stating it wants to make Ontario “a green economy leader.”

I felt I had moved through an invisible portal from the 20th Century -- where the UK’s New Labour government plans to build new coal-fired power stations and expand Heathrow Airport -- to the 21st where clean, green and renewable thinking predominated. It was a wonderful relief.

But I was wrong. In spite of Ontario’s new Green Energy Act, the McGuinty government plans to spend almost $30 billion to refurbish and expand its nuclear plants. In my opinion, this, too, reveals a 20th Century mentality that will not only affect the health and safety of Ontarians, but also waste their hard earned dollars and what little time we have left to fight Global Warming.

In spite of the denials of some, humanity sits at a crucial crossroads. We can either embrace the new or cling to the obsolete. Those who want to spend billions of dollars on nuclear, coal, and even gas -- the Non-Renewable Three -- are looking backward to ways they know and have become dependent on, rather than stretching their minds to what should lie ahead.

Indeed, what is needed is an entirely new vision of how we run our societies and live our lives. Nature is telling us that we have a finite amount of certain 20th Century fuels -- uranium for nuclear, coal, natural gas. As well, the melting of the Arctic Ice Cap and frightening weather, among others, are unavoidable indications that the status quo no longer works.

The brain power and limited amount of money we have at our disposal should be directed toward rethinking, not repeating. As Toronto architect Greg Allen states, we have to imagine and communicate a comprehensive proposal -- rather than piecemeal solutions -- for the future, which entails nothing less than redesigning the world.

If we look beyond our borders, we can get an idea of what that future could and should look like. In Germany, for example, the government was faced with a decision in the 1990s whether to support and subsidize its ageing nuclear and coal plants or move forward to a new energy future.

It opted for the latter and passed revolutionary legislation to give green, decentralized energy sources priority access to the electricity grid, thereby allowing the blossoming of green technologies, green jobs and even green energy exports.

Ontario -- Canada -- is at such a point, but too many citizens don’t realize it. For this reason, governments won’t act as aggressively as they need to. At the same time, most people aren’t aware of the potential for exciting, innovative and safer options and opportunities.

Green advocates have to clearly demonstrate that we can have small, less invasive, “laptop” sources of energy -- from solar, wind, water, geo-thermal, “waste” gases from landfill sites and farms and cogeneration (recycling energy from industrial and other sources). So much remains untapped.

We must emphasize the great savings we can make through energy conservation -- by generously subsidizing the insulation and retrofitting of homes and businesses, insisting on stringent energy-efficient standards for new construction, making the purchase of energy-efficient appliances compulsory and returning to more natural methods of lighting, cooling and ventilating (the sun, trees, windows).

Money spent on expensive, high-tech, pie-in-the-sky schemes such as carbon sequestration (burying CO2) should be diverted to those that work, such as building efficient public transit, bicycle lanes and planting trees (the best carbon sequestration method we have).

We must begin to “terraform” our cities and towns, where most of us live. This means seeing them as life-supporting environments which function together, circulating and regenerating renewable energy, rather than just endlessly consuming the non-renewable variety. As Allen points out, this requires planners to promote the “interconnectedness” of the urban infrastructure.

It has been calculated that 64 offshore wind sites situated along the
Canadian side of Lake Ontario could provide more than enough power for Ontario’s peak output consumption. We should be pushing for the retooling of our also-obsolete auto plants in order to build thousands of wind turbines, as they have done in Germany, and create plenty of jobs for our autoworkers.

Finally, with the full-blown support of governments, we must replace our oil-dependent lifestyles with fresh, green ones, trading sea-doos for sailboats, using natural products with less or no packaging and planting gardens wherever possible. Once we break from old habits, we will find the new paths invigorating.

Again, this is no time for expensive nuclear power that pollutes from the time the uranium is mined to the building and running of huge plants to the desperate attempts to deal with radioactive waste. And major government spending on nuclear sends a message to renewable energy developers -- and the public -- that it isn’t really that serious about going green.

Instead, it’s time to promote and publicize a clearly-defined, multi-faceted new vision, which will spark people’s imaginations and enthusiasm -- and leave them clamouring for change.

Kathleen O'Hara has been a print, radio and television journalist for 15 years. She worked as a producer for national programs, including "As It Happens" on CBC radio and "The Journal" on CBC TV, as well as radio shows in various regions of the country.

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