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The irreparably hazardous nature of fossil and radioactive fuels gives us no choice but to go green. We should be aware that burning fossil fuels in the current Global Warming situation is a crime against humanity. The best gift anyone could give themselves and their loved ones is a chance at survival and comfortable life through a complete phase-out of fossil and radioactive fuel mining and burning. |
May 21, 2008 – Ontario, Canada
That new gas plants are proposed for King Township and Georgina of North York Region or new high-voltage overhead transmission lines from Markham to Newmarket may not sound alarming to those not directly targeted. But alarming, it should be to all of us!
There are 12 natural gas fired plants underway in Ontario and another 6 in operation. This means that there are 18 regions in Ontario facing belching smokestacks in their backyard.. Adding the two proposed gas plants in King and Georgina we end up with 20 natural gas plants in Ontario. That would be equivalent to about seven coal-fired plants, thus not making twenty natural gas plants a solution to phasing out of four existing coal-fired plants in Ontario.
What is the collective impact of all this fossil fuel burning in Ontario? Is building outdated dinosaurs the least cost option? Will it produce energy whose rates won’t leave anyone behind in freezing or sweltering darkness due to inability to pay heating/cooling or electricity bills. Is it the most environmentally friendly? Is it the most energy secure? Have we looked at installing integrated renewable energy systems and then decided that natural gas burning for energy is environmentally, economically, environmentally and security-wise better option?
Located in Markham, Thorold, Oshawa, London, Brampton, Trenton, Sudbury 2x, St. Clair Township, Sarnia, Toronto’s Waterfront, Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, Halton Hills, Mississauga, Courtright, Kingsville, Sault Ste Marie, King Township, Georgina, Windsor 2x, most of these gas plants ring the already choked-up GTA.
Where implementation of renewable energy would make sense, many of the proposed fossil fuel burning plants would be built to produce very few megawatts of energy. For example: 2.3MW in Oshawa; 5MW in Markham; 5MW in Sudbury; 6.8MW Sudbury Hospital; 7.2MW in Trenton 11.5MW in Kingsville; 12MW in London; 63 MW in Sault Ste Marie; 84 MW in East Windsor; 90 MW Toronto Pearson International Airport; 236MW in Thorold; 280MW in Mississauga (Greenfield South).
“Very few megawatts reserved for energy-peaking periods” is the government’s ticket to fast-tracking outdated smoke-belching dinosaurs whose burning could be easily expanded to year-round production of significantly more MW than originally proposed. This type of strategizing is wasting our precious time and resources now that we find ourselves pregnant with deep-rooted social transformation waiting for its entry in Ontario.
Multiple communities in Ontario are refusing to be the grounds for dirty energy burning. Communally suited mix of renewables for every building in those communities is the answer they want to see implemented. If there is any issue which could connect communities with one another into one large movement across the whole province, it is the tyranny of fossil fuel burning in Ontario. If anything could be the catalyst for the green energy development, the fossil and radioactive fuels dictatorship in Ontario could.
Should anyone in Ontario be a host to a fossil or radioactive fuel burning dinosaur for the sake of their own or someone else’s electricity? NO, and this is why:
Radioactive (uranium) and fossil fuels (coal/natural gas/methane) are obtained through mining practices which are irreversibly destructive to environment and peoples’ lives and which are usually secured through armed occupations of Aboriginal and foreign lands.
Just as the fossil and radioactive fuels come from environmental destruction at one end (mining), they produce billions of tons of waste causing irreversible environmental destruction at the other (burning), and much of it in between (trucking/shipping). Waste from multiple sites converges in the air (greenhouse gases for example have choked the atmosphere to death causing Global Warming), water, and soil. Irreversible impact of fossil and radioactive fuel mining, trucking/shipping and burning turns our collective environment into a long-term toxic dump. This is where Ontario government is heading with its Energy “plan.” The question of Energy should not be the question of Water, Air or Land. It shouldn’t be either / or equation in which we either have energy or clean water and air. It also should not be the question of occupation of foreign and Aboriginal lands.
Above all, fossil fuel burning, which plays a major role in radioactive fuel chain, causes Global Warming, a planetary trend of extreme, unpredictable and swiftly changing unfriendly weather patterns with the potential to wipe out our way of life as we know it. Simultaneous multiple environmental catastrophes testify to this. We may have not been hit to the extent others have, but Global Warming is all-encompassing. Some fatal consequences of “climate chaos” are skyrocketing electricity prices, skyrocketing food prices and resulting food riots, blackouts due to supply shortages or their weather-interrupted distribution networks, ripped transmission lines, and worst of all mass death, disease and eco-refugeesm. In light of this, adding Greenhouse Gases to our collective atmosphere is a crime against humanity.
It is in this context of Global Warming that Ontario Power Authority is forcing fossil fuel burning on many Ontario’s communities.
In stark contrast, communally-determined integrated renewable energy technologies (geothermal, solar, wind, waste-gas) harness fuels which are local, free and limitless. If installation of such technologies is not publicly subsidized the way it SHOULD BE, they pay for themselves. Integrated renewables eliminate electricity and heating bills as energy supplies are in the local renewable commons domain.
Also is eliminated the need for invasion and occupation of land for fuel supplies. For example, the land of Appalachian people in the United States is literally consumed to the bare bone so that the coal from their mountains can be burned in Ontario’s coal-fired plants not only for our energy but for Ontario’s profits derived from exporting it back to the U.S. This has created a David vs. Goliath situation where Appalachian people have to wear bullet-proof vests to protect themselves from mining corporations in response to their organizing to save their homeland. It is not a small thing to create wars out of our need for energy or profits. Potential for conflict is a factor which must be considered in our choice of energy fuels.
It is no brainer that energy for our electricity and heating/cooling must not come from environmentally destructive practices or human rights abuses. It is not only that we can, but we must go green with mandatory, access-for-all, integrated renewable energy technologies and energy efficiencies with the goal that every building is 100 per cent green building. Integrated renewables for 100 per cent green buildings policy should be a mandatory prerequisite for all new economic growth and development in Ontario thereby eliminating the need for natural gas, coal or nuclear.
We have developers ready to transform Ontario into a modern environmentally and people-friendly province. It is Ontario Power Authority (OPA), however, that is artificially selecting fossil fuel burning developers to build new energy supply in Ontario. There is no competition process in which those most environmentally and people friendly energy technologies could win.
OPA artificially opens competition to only one type of energy developers according to their personal preference and interest: fossil fuel burning developers – in times when fossil fuel burning is rejected outright by every community – including the world’s scientific and peoples’ community.
And what are Ontario’s targeted communities to do when the law protects OPA’s undemocratic decisions?
Bill 51 prevents people from appealing construction of a plant. First, communities are not properly informed or consulted. By the time communities start scrambling on their own, OPA is deep in the process of seeking bids from fossil fuel developers, and people are up against Bill 51 – no right to appeal plant construction according to law.
For example, the Town of Aurora Council Public Meeting on April 30, 2008, organized to address the proposed gas plant in King township, featured a panel of speakers all of whom were in favour of fossil fuel burning – one from Ontario Power Authority, one from Association of Power Producers (represents more than 100 energy corporations in Ontario), one from Power Stream (electricity distribution company in the area), and one is from Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA), which supported building of the Portlands natural gas plant on Toronto’s waterfront against the wishes of the community at large. OCAA opposes King and Georgina proposed gas plant not because of the grave dangers of fossil fuel burning but because the proposed plants are not the right type of gas plants to do it more efficiently.
Not unlike a tightly controlled corporate event, the public meeting in Aurora was structured so that the panelists had 10 minutes each to present their views. Public was allowed to pose one question each and each panelist was given 2 minutes to answer the questions coming from concerned people.
Contrasting rubberstamp “public consultation meetings,” was an independent fact-finding mission by a group of King residents called King Countryside Stewardship Alliance (KCSA), which contacted OPA asking questions about the consequences of the proposed gas plant on their water. They either never received response or received responses which didn’t answer their questions.
Beyond ignoring residents’ concerns and not addressing environmental, energy and economic consequences of building an outdated dinosaur on the green pastures of North York Region, OPA uses other tactics as well.
In North York Region, OPA has managed to pit two communities against each other: if the gas plant is not built in King Township of NYR then high voltage transmission lines will be built over the residences and schools in Markham and Aurora of NYR and vice versa.
Residents fighting new transmission lines in Markham and Aurora called S.T.O.P (Stop Transmission Lines Over People) are supporting OPA’s decision to build the gas plant in King Township because this would temporarily solve their own problem in Aurora and Markham. Not only are they siding with OPA, but they are showing open hostility towards the King Countryside Stewardship Alliance. After their March 30th community meeting trying to discuss implications of a new gas plant for their countryside green environment, KING residents of KCSA were accused by S.T.O.P. of spreading “inaccuracies” about the gas plant and that since they don’t want the gas plant, “transmission [is their] preferred solution.”
Nothing can be further from truth because King Countryside Stewardship Alliance rose above OPA’s either/or trap saying that they do NOT support either the gas plant or transmission lines.
They are on the right track. Both communities, King Countryside Stewardship Alliance and S.T.O.P. should unite under one banner of calling for full implementation of renewable energy technologies not only as a prerequisite for new “economic growth and development” but for existing infrastructure as well. And then, S.T.O.P and KING should be uniting with other 18 communities in the same situation together with the renewable energy developers – demanding GREEN ENERGY ONLY.
It is important that targeted communities get connected and work in solidarity with each other for green energy only.
It is important that targeted communities work together with renewable energy (policy) developers to suit their local energy needs in environmentally friendly ways. It is important to ask why communities in Ontario presently don’t have right to choose green energy technologies over fossil fuel ones, or those technologies which are most environmentally and people friendly.
It is important that all communities in Ontario support the targeted communities toward our collective social transformation into GREEN ENERGY ECONOMY. We should not think that it is not our problem if a fossil or radioactive burning plant is built in someone else’s backyard in Ontario. Wherever they are, fossil fuel burning plants reduce our chances at collective survival on Planet Earth. It is important to completely phase out coal/gas/nuclear plants in Ontario and go GREEN ASAP.
Ivona Vujica
ontarioenergy@gmail.com
REFERENCES
“I don’t think they’re straight with us at all.” King Township residents fight gas plant plan National Post March 31, 2008 http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/Story.html?id=411343
“Well, let’s see who is misleading whom,” King residents raise concern over a letter sent by OPA to Mayor Black The King Sentinel Township April 16, 2008 http://www.kingsentinel.com/news/2008/0416/news/005.html
“They are either lying or incompetent, or both!” A History of the MHA’s Involvement With The Proposed Natural Gas Power Plant http://www.marklandwood.org/Eastern_History.htm
Monstrous toxin-spewing invader, say the residents of Milton http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2006/10/30/power-to-the-people/
Fight against Bill 51, which eliminates the right of appeal on power plant construction IS NOT OVER http://www.thehaltonherald.ca/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=156
“if they took money to allow these people to pollute, then shame on them” If a community is only w orth the planning put into it, what’s Halton Hills worth? The Halton Herald December 19, 2006 http://www.thehaltonherald.ca/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=171
“..proposed energy centre just doesn’t make sense … Air studies done in downtown Toronto show pollution levels near hazardous thresholds..” Fletcher and Tabuns derail Portlands Energy Centre 06 21, 2006 http://www.readingt.readingcities.com/index.php/toronto/comments/fletcher_and_tabuns_derail_portland_energy_centre/
OPA’s lists of natural gas plants (two websites):
http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/Page.asp?PageID=924&SiteNodeID=236 http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/Page.asp?PageID=924&SiteNodeID=174
Aurora Council Public Meeting Agenda http://www.town.aurora.on.ca/aurora/index.aspx?ArticleID=1957〈=en-CA
Richard Johnson of S.T.O.P.: “…transmission is [KCSA's] preferred solution…” http://www.aurorapowerupdate.com/Home/readmore/tabid/359/language/en-US/Default.aspx
Ontario Clean Air Alliance. Too big, too costly and too polluting http://www.cleanairalliance.org/nyr
Coal mining ravages Appalachia mountains Toronto Star February 23, 2008 http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Environment/article/306165
Coal’s ascent is igniting a debate. W. Virginians split over costs, benefits. The Boston Globe. December 26, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/12/26/coals_ascent_is_igniting_a_debate/
The Great Struggle Continues….
