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There’s no hope left to go around

November 21, 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Laura Campbell

You know, we used to worry about nuclear holocaust, and then the Cold War ended, and all is well now…. don’t worry so much about climate change.’ 

Unfortunately, more than one person has said this to me. It got me thinking about how hard it will be to save our planet now. How can we be comparing our current scenario to the Cold War? They couldn’t be more different. 

During the Cold War, a limited number of actors had to change course on their foreign policy behaviours, and COULD do so very quickly. Changing course took immediate effect; one day the East German government decided they would no longer defend the wall- and then it fell, and it was over. We don’t have that same agency with climate change.

Generations upon generations of our ancestors always had unique worries, of course. But the source of our generational worries never really go away; we just learn to deal with them, to manage the problems. 

For instance, in theory we are currently not at risk of nuclear war; but nuclear proliferation is far from over, in particular in the context of rogue states, terrorism, and revanchism of age-old rivalries. The stockpiles of weapons still exist.  

Similarly, disease also seems less aggressive now (if you have access to good healthcare, which over half of the world does not). Even in Canada, we are not immune to superbugs. There are many more examples like this, but this isn’t the place to elaborate on them. 

When we take stock of the solutions we have to halt the warming of our planet, there are actually a few on the table. The caveat is that we have to do them very quickly now (under 10 years), and they are multi-faceted and require not only policy-level shifts in our governments but global changes undertaken simultaneously. Given that reality, you can imagine how infuriating it must be to watch as our provincial government dismantles wind turbines. 

Therein lies my hopelessness. It’s one thing to charge ahead on highways as opposed to electrified transit (here’s looking at you, Mayor Thompson of Caledon), but quite another to dismantle climate solutions. 

Who is at the wheel here? Let’s talk about fiscal responsibility first. Premier Ford ran on an agenda that was meant to “respect the taxpayer.” What on earth is respectful about losing over $230 million of our money because this is yet another issue that Premier Ford and his cabinet refuses to backtrack on? 

Nearly 800 wind turbine projects were scrapped. One of them, the White Pines Wind development, was partially completed. It was a project the good people of Milford, Ontario were keen to see built. A quick drive through Prince Edward County this past Spring revealed lawn signs galore that read: ‘We support renewable energy!’ 

Many residents have showed up to the White Pines building sites, time and time again, to protest their dismantling. I spoke to one of them, and they reported that it had been too windy over the past few weeks, and therefore unsafe for workers to get up to take them down. 

The irony is tragic. There is too much wind (uncaptured carbon-neutral electricity) to dismantle the windmills. It’s almost like nature is trying to tell us something… 

The $230 million in penalties could have been used to fund energy transmission systems, updating the electricity grid, attracting clean-tech businesses (or invested in healthcare and long-term care, but that’s a whole other column). Onshore wind projects have the potential to reduce carbon by 84.6 gigatons (Project Drawdown, Solution #2). They also present savings upwards of $7 trillion. 

It doesn’t make any sense that our government would cancel these projects given that their main goal is to lower our electricity costs, and yet, hydro has just announced a rate hike. None of it makes any sense. It just isn’t logical. 

So there are one of two things going on here: 1) Complete incompetence; or, more likely 2) other industries have been lobbying relentlessly. Nuclear, natural gas, etc. Which again, is ironic, considering the lengths to which Conservatives went to complain about the lobbying SNC Lavalin did, federally. 

Why do I feel hopeless today? Seeing through the construction of already-approved (and partially completed) wind energy projects is the bare minimum we can do to address climate change. 

A recent social media campaign making the rounds is reminding us of yet another tragedy in our current crisis: dying coral reefs. 

These underwater landscapes will not survive a warming ocean. Healthy coral reefs are essential to a healthy ocean; they are deeply connected. And guess what? We get two-thirds of our oxygen supply from the ocean. 

Which part of these facts do our leaders (locally, provincially, federally, and globally) not understand? So far, the first head of state to meet this challenge most seriously is Jacinda Adern of New Zealand. 

Can Ontario, and Canada more broadly come together to clean up our act? Given that not only Doug Ford, but also the Premier of Alberta, is hell-bent on climate destruction, I’m feeling less confident. But we’ve got to try.

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