Wasting Green on Green

The green economy kind of reminds me of a wishing well. You throw money down it fully knowing you probably won't get anything in return. Despite this, something compels people to keep throwing their pennies in. The Ontario Government falls into this category, as do a lot of other left leaning governments across North America. The saviour of our economic woes is going green, and it has the added benefit of saving us from climate change. However, this doesn't make much sense to me, probably because I have half a brain. At best, the green economy at present represents a niche market. How many people do you know own a Prius, or any other hybrid car for that matter. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, I don't know a single person that does. Nobody in my neighbourhood owns one. Yet somehow the government keeps trying to sell me on the "fact" that the US automakers building hybrids will save that industry. It's the same thing with these idiots at Tesla Motors trying to sell luxury electric cars to people, despite the fact that a successful EV line has not been sold in North America in almost 100 years. Green cars cost more than gasoline powered ones due to the cost of the batteries. Right now, people are going to be looking for low cost cars. The reason American automakers are failing is that they've failed to build a low cost commuter car that is reliable. This is why Honda and Toyota have eaten them alive. Switching to hybrid lines, by all logic, isn't going to make a lick of difference.

The second part of this has to do with Ontario's plan to invest huge sumsof money in wind farms. Windmills are expensive and inefficient and nobody wants one near their house. "Tough luck" says Dalton McGuinty. Despite backing down on Oakridges and allowing developers to put up houses on protected land at the base of the Niagara Escapement in Halton, McGuinty is now fancying himself as an environmental crusader. This is just the latest harebrained bandwagon issue for the left. It will create jobs they say. Imagine taking an auto assembler or white collar office worker and getting them to put up windmills. They wouldn't know what to do and no amount of "retraining" is going to change that. These jobs are not sustainable and the whole concept behind them is hugely impractical. Of course, it's another example of McGuinty pretending to do something to fix the problem without actually doing anything at all. I'm surprised he hasn't blamed Mike Harris yet for the economy, though he does blame him for the energy woes the windmills will supposedly solve. What he doesn't like to remind people is how he pushed through the demolition of the Lakeview generating station without anything to replace it, simply because it was coal fired. Nothing to replace it with. Mississauga now refuses to allow any more power plants in the city, with Hazzle "Past Her Sell By Date" McCallion saying they should be built in Milton. We're in a big economic mess and pouring money into niche and dying industries is not going to solve the problem.