On Climate Change in Ontario

 

Breaking wind.

Following is a response to a question on climate change asked at the recent Beaches-East Yortk all-candidates meeting.

The best thing Ontario can do for the environment is to kill the carbon tax.

It is economic suicide to increase the price of everything at a time of rampant inflation and economic stagnation. It kills the post-Covid recovery. 

It also makes global warming worse.

The atmosphere does not respect provincial or national boundaries. 

If we increase the costs of doing business in Ontario, manufacturing moves to places like China or India or Russia or Brazil, where they must burn dirty coal for fuel, and have fewer environmental controls. The net effect is more greenhouse gases and faster climate change. 

Not to mention risks to the supply chain, and to our national defense.

So long as we do not have one world government, the only practical solution is improved technology. We must develop more efficient and less expensive ways to produce energy. 

Elon Musk seems to be showing the way. 

Not just by developing electric cars, but he has offered a $100 million US prize for new technologies for carbon capture. The Ontario government might sponsor a similar program.

Wind turbines are not improved technology. 

If wind was an economical and reliable source of energy, we would still see ships under sail. 

New Blue wants to end the wind turbines. Because they are uneconomical, they drive electricity costs up and industry away. And they are not so great for the environment. They kill birds, they cause noise pollution, they mar natural vistas. 

We need no charging after windmills.

You know the “dark satanic mills” in the hymn “Jerusalem?” Those were windmills south of London. Blake wrote before the age of steam.

We need to look at nuclear. 

Nuclear sounds scary, but it is almost pollution-free, and much safer than it once was. There are recent breakthroughs in nuclear fusion.

In a country like France, they must build the nuclear plants relatively close to large population centres. Here in Ontario we have the luxury of wide open spaces. We can make nuclear safer still by building far from population densities, and running wires south, just as we do for Churchill or James Bay.

I’d like to voice support here for one plank of the Liberal platform. I think their plan to reduce transit fares for a couple of years makes sense, to encourage public transit as an alternative to driving. I would support that too. 

For that matter, the PCs deserve credit for improving public transit throughout the province. I look forward to the Eglinton line, if it is ever finished. I do not expect to live to see the Ontario line.

The Wolfe Island Apocalypse

And was Jerusalem builded here? Wolfe Island, Ontario.

Revisiting Wolfe Island, Ontario after many years, I discover it is now one huge “wind farm.” The flat terrain and the surrounding lake are apparently ideal for wind turbines.

Approaching in the Wolfe Island Ferry, my six year-old say the turbines, and spontaneously remarked, “It’s the end of the world.” My first thought was William Blake’s reference to “dark satanic mills,” in “Preface to Jerusalem.”

Apart from the noise pollution of the turbines, and the fact that they kill birds, and generate little power, I think the visual damage to the landscape is an important consideration. This falls under the heading of feng shui, the Chinese art and science of ergonomics. Symbolically, wind turbines or wind mills are very dark. They represent an attempt to harness the spirit (the root word and image here is “wind”) for materialist purposes. This is the definition of black magic, of conjuring.

This may seem trivial in in itself to a materialistic mind set. But, whether we are conscious of it or not, such symbolic implications register emotionally, and can generate an overall feeling of unease or disquiet, which can build up over time and have a serious effect on our quality of life. The intelligent awareness of such subconscious messages is why a Chinese or Japanese tea garden can seem so restful.

Old mill stream. Upper Canada Village, Ontario.

Interestingly, by contrast, a water mill or water wheel is symbolically pleasant and peaceful. Water is emotion, time, and change. Symbolically harnessing and regulating it in such a way suggests tranquility, like the regular turning of the seasons.

We ought to engineer with these considerations in mind.