Electric cars and unicorns: Ontario’s new green scheme – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – May 24, 2016)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The future is going to be a lot of fun in Ontario. Just a few years from now, millions of us will be liberated from our evil fossil-fuelled transportation network. Millions of government-subsidized electric cars will whisk us silently to work. Our buses will run on biofuels.

Our retrofitted geothermal-powered homes will keep us warm at prices much higher than today’s natural gas (which would be banned). Vast tracts of land will be diverted to solar panels, which will transform the sun’s rays into clean, green, righteous energy – as soon as we can figure out how to store it and attach it to the grid. Unicorns will frolic in our gardens, and pigs will fly.

Ontario’s new draft Climate Change Action Plan is a breathtaking work of fantasy, wrought by folks who evidently never met an engineer, an economist, or anybody else who knows how the real world works. Glen Murray, the Environment Minister, is a notoriously Big Thinker.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with government ministers who majored in social work and community development. But they absolutely should not be allowed to run amok unsupervised.

The provincial government will reduce our carbon footprint by micromanaging every aspect of our lives and our economy. Its plan will throw our auto and energy industries into chaos, and further enrage every small town in Ontario, whose rights have been trampled by German salesmen selling giant industrial wind turbines. It will drive some of the highest electricity prices in North America even higher.

For the rest of this column, click here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/electric-cars-and-unicorns-ontarios-new-green-scheme/article30120071/