He believes passionately in the theory of man-made global warming, a theory that has been cast into disrepute through not only the misconduct of its high priests but by scientific observation itself: There has been no measurable global warming since 1998, according to satellite weather data.
But McGuinty’s belief is deep. And he intends to build massive three-armed crucifixes across rural Ontario. The famous statue of Christ the Redeemer that overlooks Rio de Janeiro is only 130 feet tall. McGuinty’s eco-idols will be three times that height, but will serve the same imposing purpose.
Do not confuse McGuinty’s belief system with a true faith. It is a superstition, the tenets of which are capable of being scientifically disproven. It is a perverse faith, in that it reveres the “environment” ahead of people who live in it. It is a most ascetic superstition, in that it demands we live less happily and less freely and with less prosperity — the opposite of, say, the Protestant work ethic that helped build Ontario.
McGuinty wants to build billions of dollars worth of wind turbines — to call them mere windmills is to mistake their scale. No mere flour mill requires a skyscraper-sized turbine on top of it, a blight that can be seen for miles. And, like the massive cathedrals of medieval times, McGuinty’s three-armed crosses are to be paid for with tithes, from the little people.
In other words, through higher energy prices. The government itself estimates that electricity rates in Ontario will increase by 46% by 2015. That’s an extra $1,100 a year, after taxes, for the average family just to get the same power out of a wall socket. That’s like another GST.
That’s called energy poverty.
It’s not just hitting ordinary homeowners, of course. It hits industrial users of energy — that is, the very factories that McGuinty claims he wants to keep in the province.
By the end of next year, Ontario’s residential electricity rates will be higher than any U.S. state other than Alaska and Hawaii. There are plenty of challenges to Ontario’s manufacturing base that have nothing to do with McGuinty, or even with Canada.
But choosing to spend billions on solar panels and wind skyscrapers — and to jack up utility rates on purpose — is only hastening Ontario’s decline.
There have been plenty of critics — good faith critics, who want to undo Ontario’s shocking descent into the list of “have-not provinces” — who have criticized the premier’s fundamentalist zeal in standing by his green schemes. Even Ontario’s own auditor general has condemned the haphazard way in which the deals were announced, where the press release came before the business plan.
But that’s the thing about religion, or superstition. It’s hard to talk someone out of it. Instead of re-evaluating his province’s course, he has done something very un-Ontarian: He has lashed out at other provinces, like Alberta, blaming their success for his province’s failures.
That will come as news to the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians who depend on the oilsands for work, on Bay St. and in manufacturing. But that’s not the point.
The point of any zealot is to have an external enemy to blame.
Ontario doesn’t need green energy. It needs cheap, plentiful energy — some of it from fossil fuels — and the jobs that will come with it.
Original Article
Source: toronto sun
Author: Ezra Levant
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