When Life Imitates the Simpsons… An Inconvenient Truth…
You know those people who can equate virtually everything that happens in life to an episode of the Simpsons? I haven’t really been able to find many situations in my life that tie neatly into episodes of the Simpsons, but one episode came to mind last night as I was getting ready to go to bed. Sure enough someone had already found and uploaded the portion of the specific episode I was thinking about to youtube. The cultural phenomenon that is the Simpsons has resulted in books, a legion of devoted fans and detailed Wikipedia entries of each show during it’s twenty season run.
There is more reading to do, but take a look at this clip from ‘Marge Vs. Monorail’ and think about what has been my topic of choice over the last two weeks.
Below is the plot summary of Marge vs. the Monorail – followed by my thoughts. This is from the Marge vs. the Monorail article found on Wikipedia.
“After being caught dumping nuclear waste in the city park by the EPA, Mr. Burns is fined three million dollars. A town meeting is immediately held so that the citizens can decide what to spend the money on and Marge suggests using it to fix up Main Street, which is in a bad condition. The town shows enthusiasm for this idea and is about to vote for it when suddenly a whistle is heard and a silver-tongued, fast talking gentleman named Lyle Lanley suggests the town construct a city monorail. He leads them in a song, which convinces the town to buy the monorail.
Even though Lanley succeeds in winning over the entire town, including skeptical Lisa, Marge is unhappy with the purchase, believing that the monorail is unsafe. While watching TV, Homer sees an advertisement that suggests he become a monorail conductor and Homer, claiming it to be a lifelong dream, immediately agrees. After a three week course described by Lanley as “intensive”, Homer is named the monorail conductor. Still feeling uneasy about the monorail, Marge decides to visit Lyle Lanley and discovers a notebook that reveals Lanley’s true intentions of running off with bags of money while everyone else falls victim to a faulty monorail. Marge immediately drives to North Haverbrook, which Lanley mentioned was a previous purchaser of one of his monorails. Once she arrives, Marge discovers that the town is in ruins, and that those still living there deny that they ever had a monorail, despite the fact that the town is covered in advertisements for it. While exploring, she meets Sebastian Cobb, the man who designed Lanley’s monorail. He explains that Lanley cut costs everywhere when building it, and that the entire thing is a scam.
At the maiden voyage of the monorail, the entire town has come out, including Leonard Nimoy. Lanley grabs his money and jumps in a taxi, which takes him to the airport. The monorail leaves just before Marge and Cobb arrive. At first things run smoothly, but the controls malfunction, causing the monorail to accelerate dangerously. Meanwhile, Lanley’s flight makes a brief unscheduled stop in North Haverbrook, where Lanley is immediately attacked by a group of locals. Back in Springfield, Cobb tells Homer that in order to stop the train, he needs to find an anchor. Homer grabs the giant “M” from the side of the Monorail and uses it as an anchor. Eventually, it latches onto a giant doughnut, stopping the monorail and saving its passengers. Everyone thanks Homer for saving the town, while Leonard Nimoy claims his “work here is done”, and beams up.”
Is life imitating the Simpsons? As with all things found in cartoons the scenario is more extreme, but to me at least, as sad as it is, I know after re-watching this clip and thinking about just how the current process goes for wind energy projects in Ontario goes; I found similarities. Although, Jack Simpson and Joyce McLean didn’t exactly sing and dance – well they did, but only when it came to answering direct questions. The community certainly was not in a singing or dancing mood though, at least not at the meeting that wasn’t stacked by paid supporters of their cause.
In the last two days I’ve received emails from folks who live in communities in Ontario at different stages of the wind project process. One individual wrote to tell me about the negative health implications having several turbines within sight of her home, some under 500 metres away, and another to tell me about her municipal government shutting residents like her, who could see three massive turbines installed within 600 metres of her home, out of the discussion of possible negative health effects. I’ve been thinking about how devastating each of those situations must be, and how frustrating it must be to watch again and again as various levels of your government fail to protect you from people who simply would rather deny the health impacts of their product than properly investigate it (I will also be writing more extensively about each).
The individuals in favour of these projects will point to all kinds of other health impacts. I’ve seen arguments as silly as “Do you have a microwave?” (good thing they didn’t ask me this one) a question one proponent of wind power, tried to use to suggest someone couldn’t be too worried about their health if they’d eat “radiated” food. I doubt tobacco companies were quick to recognize the correlation between smoking and cancer, the folks who brought us lead paint, pipes and gasoline, likely challenged the correlation between their products and the health impacts lead poisoning has, just like the guys who dumped heavy metals into our great lakes probably took some time to appreciate the devastating effects they were having on it’s ecosystem. The folks who build and install wind turbines appear to be no different. They just ‘make believe’ the health impacts away.
One of the annoying differences between the proponents of wind projects who just don’t care about human impact is that at least with Nuclear power (two words that can easily make these folks blow a gasket) there are very serious safety precautions and not a single incident in Ontario of a major accident. I’m not defending nuclear, I’m just saying, if a guy wanted to throw one of those up within 50 metres of someone’s home, you better believe the government would have my back and not allow it to happen. So – why is it that the self righteous folks behind Ontario’s wind industry won’t also follow minimum safety precautions to protect human health? They can say incidence levels are low, and that’s fine, incidence levels of health impacts from wind power are hundreds of times higher than the incidence of nuclear meltdowns in Ontario and yet they still have standards to follow, so why can’t the wind generators have some standards too? I’m not saying don’t build wind turbines, I’m just saying do it right. Engage communities, research and follow legitimate health guidelines, consider the efficiency of the project, the economics of a project and most important, the environmental impacts of a project. Why is this so hard? Environment, economics and efficiency – three really great places to start when examining any public policy relating to physical assets or infrastructure. Nothing should ever happen that impacts a community without it’s residents being engaged, and their well being looked out for.
The arguments above could be described as “inconvenient truths” of wind power projects in the Province of Ontario.
As Al Gore said in the movie of that very title “This is really not a political issue, so much as it is a moral issue”.
Tags: AECOM, Anemometer, Chris Tyrrell, Gartner Lee, Guildwood Wind Farm, Jack Simpson, January 20th Meeting, Joyce McLean, Lake Ontario Wind Farm, Scarborough Bluffs Wind Farm, Toronto Hydro Energy Services, Toronto Hydro Wind Farm, Wind Energy in Ontario
February 4th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Personally, I find that I can relate everything that happens in life to episodes of Seinfeld.
February 4th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Rest assured that none of the proponents of the wind farm would ever live close enough to it to suffer any personal health or monetary damages (though they hypocritically expect others to make “the sacrifice”).
Whatever happened to the precautionary principle?
February 4th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Mike,
Sadly it appears if you’re prepared to lie and stonewall and be a completely irresponsible corporate citizen the precautionary principle doesn’t apply.
You are correct though that none of these folks live anywhere near their projects. Did you know Anne Mometer and her friends at AECOM don’t even work within the City of Toronto?
February 5th, 2009 at 11:44 am
That I can believe. But what about Anne Mometer’s ex-husband Ther? (Yeah, I know—bad joke)
February 13th, 2009 at 8:50 am
The monorail song is spot on! Some years ago I transcribed the lyrics and unsubtly substituted “wind power” for “monorail”: http://kirbymtn.blogspot.com/2005/01/wind-power-song.html