Speak now…

This is it. This is likely the last best opportunity for this community to voice its opinion about wind energy before massive steel, fibreglass and concrete structures begin rising in our midst. This Saturday, the County Coalition for Safe and Appropriate Green Energy (CCSAGE) is holding one last rally in Milford.

If ever there was a moment to set aside your daily routine to join your neighbours and friends in protest—this is it. Or forever hold your peace.

For this struggle is about a community pushing back against a government and parasitic developers intent on mutilating the pristine beauty of the County. While each of us may come at this issue from a different point of view, the simple fact is that you and your neighbours are now the last line of defence for the environment, the natural habitat and indeed for the fragile ecosystem of animals, birds, insects and plants that live and thrive in Prince Edward County.

The province has chosen to willfully blindfold itself and the agencies whose job it is to protect communities like ours. The province has neutered its own guardians of nature to achieve its goal of a horizon punctuated by spinning symbols of its virtue. The Ministry of Natural Resources now just toes the line and looks the other way as wind and solar energy factories plunder and defile our natural gifts.

Witness the clear-cutting of a vast tract of land on Burr Road in recent days. Some will conclude that the mounds of shredded trees are little loss, as the County has plenty of red cedar. But to the birds, rodents and other animals who lived in those cedars, it is a big deal.

And for what? The land isn’t being cleared to grow food. It is being flattened to gather intermittent electricity to power a provincial network that was never designed for, nor can it manage, a source of energy that fluctuates when a cloud rolls by.

The story at the Ministry of Environment is worse. Like a script from a classic horror movie—the humans entrusted with protecting and defending our environment have been replaced by bodysnatchers who play the role of facilitators for wind and solar developers— streamlining approvals, assisting them in navigating the check-box assessment procedure, muffling dissent and herding opposing views into dead-end processes. Worse than looking away, the Ministry of Environment is an enabler of the province’s misguided mission.

Local governments were once an important bulwark against misguided provincial policies but Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government stripped municipalities of their authority to oversee wind and solar development and intervene to protect the community’s interest as part of the Green Energy Act.

McGuinty makes no apologies. He says these brutish, undemocratic and anti-nature measures are necessary to meet his targets of wind and solar electricity generation in this province. He is probably right. Developers weren’t interested in erecting intermittent wind and solar energy factories until McGuinty opted to lavish them with billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded subsidies and eliminated many of the safeguards that were holding them back. Now they can’t get enough. Like hungry swine, developers now clamber over themselves to push their way to the best spot at the trough.

How does he go back? How does Dalton McGuinty tell the next industrial or energy sector that their projects must undergo tough environmental scrutiny while wind and solar energy developers get a pass? His government’s credibility in protecting our environment is as endangered as the whippoorwill’s nesting ground at Ostrander Point. Perhaps the greatest worry, however, is a government that believes it knows better than the community it serves. A government that pushes ahead when all the signs point to caution and restraint. A government that has stopped listening.

Time is running out for Dalton McGuinty. The more people learn about wind and solar energy, the more they reject it as a wasteful and ultimately meaningless energy source. McGuinty is in a race against knowledge. Soon the majority of Ontarians will understand what most in Prince Edward County already know.

But this is when power-drunk politicians are at their most dangerous. They push even harder— knowing the window of opportunity is about to close.

For this reason this community must stand tall in opposition this Saturday. There is no one left to protect Prince Edward County. You are the last defence.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca