Archive for the ‘Wind Concerns Ontario’ Category
Caveat investor: Wind may let you down – My Piece for Thomson Reuters
I was pleased to have the opportunity to write a piece for the Thomson Reuters Environment Forum on the reality of risk and investing in wind developments in Ontario and worldwide. Called ‘Caveat investor: Wind may let you down’ points out several ‘inconvenient truths’ investors, industry, their lobbyists and governments can choose to either address or not.
It serves as a great opportunity to get our message out to a far larger audience (Thomson Reuters is the world’s largest news service) and I hope will spark some healthy international debate on the merits of this industry and technology in light of the clear process and due diligence failures worldwide.
Comments OffReaction to Ontario’s Deal with Samsung
Ontario’s deal with Samsung is unprecedented and has even those in support of building industrial turbines in Ontario taken aback. The fact that a Cabinet Minister entered talks with a foreign corporation and negotiated a $6 billion dollar deal with unheard of exceptions and preferential treatment should have all Ontarians concerned. Even Cabinet is split. Samsung’s deal will see grid capacity held for them in two counties where they want to install turbines, preventing other projects. Samsung will be allowed to construct a 100 MWs of solar panels over prime farmland, where all others are not allowed to by law.
Samsung has been allowed to cherry pick where they would place industrial turbines. Local municipalities and citizens with valid concerns have been shut out, because Ontario’s Green Energy Act strips municipalities of their right to participate in planning decisions for renewable energy projects, and prevents citizens from playing a meaningful role as well.
Ontario electricity users will pay Samsung even more than the current subsidized rates given to other wind or solar producers, meaning this project make even less economic sense than the others. The increased cost of electricity will hurt working families and chase even more manufacturing jobs from Ontario to other, more competitive jurisdictions.The 4,000 jobs being proposed doesn’t even come close to replacing the 350,000 manufacturing jobs lost in Ontario since 2003 or the others we can expect to lose when consumers start paying for this.
Over 100 Ontarians report adverse health impacts from improperly placed industrial wind turbines. The Government is in court where they trying to defend their decision to refuse to conduct an independent health study on the impacts of these industrial devices or regulate internationally recognized setbacks for turbines from people, making this deal even more inappropriate.
This isn’t about climate change. Even the President of the Canadian Wind Energy Association recognizes that because just 12% of carbon emissions in Ontario come from energy production, turbines can’t play a significant in addressing climate change.
Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of 42 groups in 27 counties, will not make this easy for Samsung. We have members in the counties put aside for Samsung, and residents in 25 other counties who are prepared to stand up and fight to ensure Samsung isn’t the latest to build a profit driven project, that ignores the legitimate negative health, environmental and economic impacts they cause.
John Laforet is President of Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of 42 groups in 27 counties standing up to irresponsible industrial wind turbine developments facing their communities. For more information on Wind Concerns Ontario please visit http://www.windconcernsontario.org
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Comments OffHave You Ever Noticed ‘NIMBY’ Is a Slur Used Never Used By Someone Actually From the Community Affected?
I know it’s New Years Eve and I should be wishing everyone a Happy New Year – keeping it light etc. etc. But I wanted to make a comment on something that really bothered me today first.
I loath those who accuse others of being ‘NIMBY’. It is a bizarre, infuriating argument that demonstrates nothing more than the general intolerance of the individual uttering the phrase. There was a piece done by the CBC that interviewed a woman named Colette McLean, a farmer in Harrow Ontario who has done more for her community than many people I know and probably more than all the anonymous eco-bullies that are attacking her in the comment section.
The folks who call other’s NIMBY which stands for Not-in-my-back-yard are rarely affected by the project they support for someone else’s community. They are hypocritical idealists whose actions demonstrate the saying ‘opinions are like assholes – everybody’s got one’ has some merit. They have an inflated opinion of the value of their unaffected, uninformed opinion,when compared with the informed opinion of someone who will be affected. Imagine the kind of arrogance it takes to assume that your uninformed view of how someone should think or live or what should happen to their community, of which you aren’t a part, should supersede a local resident’s own informed view.
Those who oppose something in their community often would oppose it anywhere else based on the proposal they’ve rejected. I know that is the case with Colette, it is certainly the case in Scarborough and within all Wind Concerns Ontario’s forty two groups in twenty seven counties. We want province wide protections for all communities.
In Scarborough we had the Toronto Environmental Alliance, an ineffective, City of Toronto funded ‘pat on the back’ squad for City Council (who provide their funding), organize buses of downtown folks to come out and attack local residents for raising questions about a totally unprecedented project – effectively trying to shut down an Environmental Assessment process for their political masters and funders. None of them lived in the area, none of their ‘backyards’ were affected. They knew so little about our community they didn’t even know how to take the TTC to the meeting location. Instead they rented school buses to shuttle people from the subway and literally mirrored the 116 Morningside bus route – harming the environment in the process by putting more diesel burning vehicles on the road.
Yet the ‘holier than thou hypocrites’ felt they somehow had the right to tell others that we couldn’t expect a fair process, a proper environmental assessment or demand international standards be met. These folks fought an environmental assessment, are funded by the same folks funding Toronto Hydro’s research and used bully tactics to try and stop local democracy. Simply put – they had no stake and felt others who did have a stake should only have a right to the opinion of those who aren’t affected.
We had them outnumbered though (3 to 1 – 900 to 300) even with all their well financed astroturfing our grassroots strength can take them any day of the week on this issue.
In Colette’s case – the people attacking her live in places like British Columbia, Manitoba, Ottawa, Etobicoke – not Harrow Ontario – not anywhere close. Perhaps the uninformed and unaffected who hide behind this insult should recognize how hypocritical it is for them to preach what SHOULD go in other’s backyards while theirs aren’t affected. They haven’t attended a single meeting, they haven’t read the proposal, they haven’t participated in the process – yet they somehow think they know what is best for Colette’s community and neighbours.
Those who seek to attack others and claim that all the local community care about is their own home, or that something is wrong with standing up for their community – should stick to their knitting and do more to shape the look, character and development of their own communities in the way they would like to see them shaped and butt out of decisions affecting others that have no impact on them. What’s more the actions folks take close to home often are calling for broad changes to how things are done across the entire jurisdiction.
I know Colette McLean as I know countless others around Ontario who are fighting these irresponsible projects and yes they care about their communities, but there isn’t anything wrong with that and anyone who thinks there is – needs to have their head checked. The changes they seek to how things are done would help protect all Ontarians and all Ontario communities from harm, not just their own. But it starts with local action and leadership.
The day people stop caring about their communities, and stop trying to shape the destiny of their part of the world is the day industry and government will have total control. To those so-called environmentalists who support rollbacks in environmental assessments and gutting local involvement in planning decisions – I say, you’re rolling back democracy and while it may start with turbines, it won’t stop there. It will continue to natural gas plants which back up wind turbines – as it has already in the Holland Marsh and Mississauga/Oakville area and will continue through the nuclear power plants you despise, dump sites, heavy industrial zoning, urban sprawl proposals, big box stores, intensification projects, demolition of heritage buildings, private for profit use of public commons among other things. All of this because you felt so strongly about what other communities should be doing that you supported silencing members of the affected community so your vision for how they should live could be fulfilled.
We all need to care about what happens in our communities, and backyards because that is where each of us can have the largest impact. Sure we can have a larger view and should. We should all be demanding proper environmental protection, and an understanding of human impacts on all projects – whether wind turbines or any other significant environmental change before any shovels hit the ground – but above all we as citizens shouldn’t join in with industry and government and turn on those who seek due diligence to protect their communities from harm – especially when we ourselves don’t live there and don’t understand the details or risks. We should never shout down people standing up for these things or their communities.
It is people like Colette McLean who is standing up not just for herself and her family, but her community and communities like hers around Ontario that should be respected and appreciated for their efforts and not attacked by cowards hiding behind anonymous comments on a news story.
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