Ruling out all options

In common with a lot of other jurisdictions, the Province of Ontario is moving to phase out the use of coal in power generation.  It's also gradually reducing the role of the existing (and aging) fleet of nuclear plants, and reconsidering plans to build new ones.  Gas generating plants are still under construction, but not in areas where the power is actually needed:  in a long-running scandal, the taxpayer is on the hook for more than a billion dollars in connection with a couple of plants, already under construction, that were moved from the Toronto area ahead of the last provincial election.

Still, that leaves plenty of renewable options, right?  Well, not exactly.  A big push by the government to increase wind power generation has fallen foul of furious opposition from rural communities that don't want their pristine landscapes scarred by arrays of ugly windmills.  Solar power remains far more expensive than conventional alternatives, and can only be considered a partial solution for a country at Canada's latitude. And even hydro power proposals don't seem to be able to make it past the NIMBYs -- see this example from the bucolic Muskoka region.

Which leaves us with what, exactly?  Environmentalists argue for conservation rather than generation, pointing to the fact that electricity usage has fallen by 10 percent over the past decade.  However, this is largely the result of the virtual collapse of the province's manufacturing base over the same period, so it's not a good thing, and it's certainly not an indication of future trends.

And then there's the possibility of importing power from neighbouring Quebec.  Hydro Quebec's generating plants at Baie James are one of the engineering wonders of the world, but for Ontario to rely on them as a base source of power would be fraught with risk.  A huge network of transmission lines would be needed to bring the power to Ontario, which would undoubtedly run into massive local opposition.  Moreover, as Quebecers themselves discovered back in the 1990s, a major ice storm can bring the lines down and leave whole cities in the cold and dark.  Lastly, Hydro Quebec currently sells surplus power into the NEPool in the United States.  While this is mostly done under short-term contract, it would seem unwise for Ontario to rely for much of its power on supplies for which it has to compete with other buyers.

A motto of the environmental movement is "think globally, act locally".  In the debate over future power generation in Ontario, citizens are both thinking and acting locally because they assume that someone else is taking care of the big picture.  You wonder what would happen if the citizens of Bala Falls, Muskoka, for example, were given an honest choice.  Something like, "Do you agree to the construction of a hydro generating plant, or do you want to freeze to death next winter?"