Citizens Environment Alliance

CEA in the News

Opinion - Guest column: We need to lead in environmental technologies and services

By Derek Coronado, Julee Boan and Rick Smith, The Windsor Star December 21, 2012

The idea of building an entire economic strategy around oil has only one problem for Ontario: We don’t have any.

Yes, the province has other resources, particularly minerals, that could support such a narrow one-pillar economic approach, but even rocks have a limited economic shelf life, as the dwindling diamond boom in the NWT attests.

What we really need around here is to latch on to some things the world is going to need for a long time to come. Like clean energy and clean water, and the technologies to produce both. Like sustainably grown foods and sustainably harvested resources, and the systems to grow and harvest them. Like smart, livable cities that draw people from around the world who can help us figure out the next big thing while helping us address today’s big problems like climate change.

In short, the next premier of Ontario needs to keep pulling this province toward the future, not drag it back to the past. Turning our back on green energy at a time when countries such as China, Japan and Germany are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in wind and solar technology — not to mention working to double their energy efficiency — would be beyond shortsighted: It would be economically suicidal.

Continuing to feed urban sprawl with mega-highways and subsidies for subdivision developers — while leaving transit riders to pay more and more of the cost of riding crumbling systems — will leave us with lousy air, increased economic waste as shipments sit in gridlock, and more stress for families.

And charging ahead with digging mines and building roads in the piecemeal fashion we always have in the northern boreal region will ensure we once again squander a chance to better protect vital environmental services like climate regulation and clean water and, most importantly, the opportunity for the province to begin a new relationship of mutual respect with First Nations.

In a world where avoiding two degrees of warming now seems unlikely and where events like Superstorm Sandy are the “new normal,” we need a leader with the vision to shape our province for the very different world that is right around the corner. He or she must take Ontario’s tremendous natural advantages – like bordering four of the five Great Lakes, harbouring one of the world’s greatest wilderness areas, and stewarding some of Canada’s richest farmland – and make the most of them. We won’t do that by quickly cashing out our natural resources, but by leveraging our knowledge advantage to feed a world hungry for environmental solutions and green goods and services.

Take transit, for example. By not only addressing our own gridlock problems, but the world’s need to move more people more efficiently, we can leverage far more jobs than by sending dollars to Alberta to subsidize oil and gas development – almost six times more jobs will be created by investing a dollar in transit instead of oil.

Ontario has already begun to develop a clean water technology cluster, but the irony is that we are still doing a poor job of stewarding one of the world’s largest sources of fresh water – our Great Lakes. Let’s create an incentive for further technological and policy progress by getting serious about getting toxics out of our lakes, keeping the water in, and protecting natural shorelines, including clean beaches.

Of course, if you want your province to become a global leader in the booming field of environmental technologies and services, you also have to walk your talk. That’s why Ontario needs to pay attention to the desires of growing number of green consumers by using its modern Endangered Species Act to ensure that our goods are produced in ways that do not harm vulnerable plants and animals. And we need to better protect the public’s right to be heard on all of these vital issues by slapping down nuisance lawsuits designed to silence critics or cut off complaints about pollution.

Finally, of course, we – and the world — also need to eat food that is healthy for us and our planet. Places like the Greenbelt are one part of the solution to putting more sustainably grown local food on our plates and we should be looking to expand this highly successful “green crown.” We also need to encourage local food processing and procurement with sensible rules and financing help for new farm-based businesses. The reward will be tastier meals and greater food security in a world where hundred year droughts now seem to happen somewhere every year.

There is a vibrant green future waiting for Ontario. Will our next Premier reach out and grab it?

Derek Coronado is Executive Ddirector of Citizens Environment Alliance, based in Windsor. Julee Boan is Boreal Program Manager for Ontario Nature and based in Thunder Bay. Rick Smith is Executive Director of Environmental Defence based in Toronto. Their organizations are among the 20 groups behind the GreenProsperity.ca initiative.