Why
There are a thousand “whys” for why we are doing this.
We are mothers, fathers, friends, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings who care deeply about our beautiful, fragile and precious earth and the future we are leaving for the young people in our lives.
With the last few years of wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, flooding and super-storms, it is evident that climate change is here and not something we can worry about down the road.
BUT we have the answers to stop the escalating chaos. Right now.
Renewable energy – now cheaper, faster to build and cleaner than gas or nuclear power.
In Ontario, we could meet 99.5% of our energy generation needs from solar power, offshore wind and battery storage.
At half the cost and in half the construction time of the gas and nuclear plans we have now.
We must phase out fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy as quickly as possible. But Ontario is going in the opposite direction. We have been rolling back climate solution initiatives since 2018, when our provincial government cancelled 750 renewable energy contracts costing taxpayers 230 million dollars. The government under Doug Ford has been ramping up gas-fired power at an exponential rate so that Ontario’s energy production is now the dirtiest since we shut down the coal plants in 2014. He is also pouring billions into four new high-cost American nuclear reactors east of Toronto that won’t be ready for a decade or more, and leaving us with high-cost electricity and dependent on the US for the enriched uranium the new nuclear plants need.
What does that mean to Ontarians? It means polluted air and water, which compromises the health of all of us, especially children and those with existing health conditions. It means higher electricity bills. It means loss of biodiversity which threatens food production and food security. It means a loss of sovereignty over our energy system. It means insurance instability. It means massive disaster recovery expenditures. It means unstable health systems.
And the loss of many things we love and hold dear.
But we don’t have to go this route. Renewables are doable.