The PenOpticon

If you think about it, information technology — particularly word processing and PowerPoint — has had a tremendous effect on the way governments communicate with their citizens. Yesterday we saw a provincial plan for nuclear development and just a day later, the Ontario government released a brand new "Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe". The 54-page document, entitled Places to Grow: Better choices. Brighter future outlines the Province's intentions for the north shore of Lake Ontario. As I read it, much of this document appears to be a cut and paste job, a collection of abstract, touchy feely ideas and political talking points — a vision statement, if you will. The crux of the matter is that over the next 25 years, the area's population is expected — if not encouraged — to grow by close to 4 million people. To accommodate this growth, the plan calls for a series of connected areas of high-density housing and commercial activity. It will also attempt to protect Ontario farmland by using a system of economic rewards and penalties to favour urban intensification instead of sprawl. The grand plan also provides practical information for local governments such as the following advice on the kinds of infrastructure that will be needed:

"Investment in community infrastructure — such as hospitals, long-term care facilities, schools, and affordable housing — should be planned to keep pace with changing needs and to promote more complete communities."

The report's generous use of italics is ironically appropriate, because presumably it will be up to the community to pay for all of this infrastructure. Conveniently, the Places to Grow document makes no mention of the police, fire-fighting and ambulance services that will be required to meet the needs of 4-million additional bodies. It also makes no mention of daycare, mental healthcare and other costly social services. It should also be noted that the word "taxes" is no where to be found in this document. No, this generic, highly abstract, flight of fancy is more concerned with logistical issues such as housing, "moving people" and "moving goods". Ok, so it's a "Vision statement", not a "Growth plan". They had to start somewhere, right? The trouble is, as a vision, Places to Grow provides no indication that growth must also be limited by what the land can bear. It needs to account for the fact that large tracts of land are needed for forests and wildlife that contribute to the overall health of the land. Whatever Places to Grow really is, we have seen similar kinds of announcements in the past. On June 5th, 1973, Premier Bill Davis "boldly" announced the Ontario government would "freeze" development to curb urban sprawl and protect 1.3 million acres of land in order to create a "green strip all around Toronto". In fact, Bill Davis’s “Green Belt” has become a grey belt of industrial complexes which surround highway 407 and the marching lines of power transmission towers which are omnipresent in the north end of Toronto. Today, the reality on the ground is that thousands of acres of agricultural land within Vaughan, Richmond Hill and Markham are being carved up for "traditional" low-density housing. Those suburaban residents will primarily be commuters — as indicated by the number of new homes with 2 and 3-car garages. To pave the way for this kind of development, York Region has begun to widen a number of outlying arteries, including a stretch of Dufferin street and Major Mackenzie Drive. Dufferin Street between 16th Avenue and Major Mackenzie Dr, Richmond Hill Up until a year ago, this stretch of Dufferin was a tree-lined two-lane road that included bicycle lanes which had been used by commuting and recreational cyclists for many years. To prepare for the sprawling subdivisions which will soon pack both sides of this road, Dufferin has now been widened and the bike lanes have disappeared. West side of Dufferin, south of Major Mackenzie Dr, Richmond Hill The topsoil has long been scraped off. Gas and water mains and a few roads have been installed in preparation for the rapid development of low-density housing that will soon fill this tract of former farmland. Formatting the future As a product of the modern information technology era, the Ontario Plan can be commended for its typography and overall graphical treatment. That's about the best one can say about it. Although it conveys some pretty feelings about preserving farmland and a handful of good ideas, such as tying the development of housing with the creation of local jobs, this plan — if it is actually followed — will acomplish too little too late. Our children are suffering from poor air quality and diminishing water quality now. Too much farmland and natural habitat are being destroyed now. This document is based on the illusion that an ever-growing population can be shoehorned into a finite patch of land — with finite resources — in a way that is sustainable.

Greenpeace’s initial “response” to the Ontario government’s nuclear development announcement was nothing short of sad, pathetic and ineffectual. Members of that group boldly chained themselves inside Energy Minister Dwight Duncan’s office. Police eventually “freed” them with pneumatic bolt cutters and then charged them with trespassing. Useless and embarrassing. We need more brains and less chains, Greenpeace. The goal of renewable energy will not be won unless it can be shown that it is the only solution we can afford.

Ontario’s 40-year tryst with nuclear energy has been marked by two things: luck and money: We have been lucky enough to avoid the kind of catastrophe that would require the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. The Pickering Nuclear Generating Station (PNGS) is just a stone’s through from Toronto, after all. It’s also kinda close to the good people of Ajax and Pickering, not to mention the community of Bay Ridges which is situated right at the plant’s doorstep (I lived there as a kid while the plant was being built). We have been lucky, so a point goes to Ontario Power Generation and AECL for not killing us all — yet.

But this kind of luck has not been cheap. We have poured boatloads of taxpayer dollars into Ontario’s nuclear plants. Let’s call it what it is: a corporate subsidy that has made a small number of people quite rich. And now once again the Liberals — and the Conservatives — want us to pony up for 20 years of additional financial servitude to this expensive, dangerous and unsustainable technology. The European Nuclear Society estimates that Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan and 7 other nations possess about 2 million tones of Uranium that can be “economically” extracted for $80 US per kilogram:

With their 2 million tonnes, all 439 world-wide operated nuclear power plants can be supplied for several decades. If mining costs of up to 130 $/kg are taken into consideration the global uranium reserves are increased by further 3 million tonnes.

In other words, by the time Ontario’s 20-year, $46 billion project ends, the real cost of fueling these reactors will increase dramatically. It is easy to blow holes in the arguments for continued nuclear development. The hard work lies in convincing ourselves and our governments that sensible conservation, wind farms, solar arrays, co-generation, and maybe even Sterling engines will allow us to keep the juice flowing.

Update - I’ve been reading Dr. Jeremy Whitlock’s instructive Canadian Nuclear FAQ. In addition to clearly presented (though understandably biased)  information on the Candian nuclear scene, Dr. Whitlock is a great communicator and has some excellent advice for would-be anti-nuclear activists.

I had never heard — or knew I heard — a Mockingbird until a just a few years ago. According to the range maps, we are not supposed to get many of them on the north shore of Lake Ontario. But, in recent years, more and more of these birds can be found in and around Toronto. If they provide a little competition for the starlings and house sparrows, I say bring ‘em on! The story of the Mockingbird’s unfortunate rise to commercial fame, near extinction and subsequent comeback is encouraging.

As the name suggests, Mockingbirds are the iPods of the bird world: they can mimic up to 200 different bird songs and some individuals are said to be able to imitate mechanical sounds. In theory Mockingbirds should be easy to spot. If an army of birdsong seems to emanate from one place and you notice a large grey bird with long black tale, there’s a good chance, you’ve got yourself a Mockingbird. But, dim as I am, it took several months to find the character in this (exceedingly bad) photo.

Since the early spring, I’ve been hearing this one at the VIVA bus station at Yonge and Highway 7. He has been hanging out in the morning glare on the east side of the railway tracks, flitting between a towering condo and a giant Home Depot. I could usually expect to hear him happily singing away in blue jay, robin, killdeer, hawk and many other dialects, but I had not actually laid eyes on the bird. When I finally found him perched in the open today, he appeared to be serenading the condo. He was either trying wake the residents (something Floridians and Texans know all about) or was using the wall of the building as an amplifier. This is an extremely noisy habitat, so I’m inclined to believe the latter. As he was singing, a CN freight train was slowly moving down the tracks to join the usual cacophony of buses, trucks and construction machinery. That’s a lot of competition for a bird to have to deal with. And so, for sheer guts and a willingness to take risks in more northerly landscapes, the Bird of the Week “award” goes to… the Northern Mockingbird.

Looks like Premiere Dalton McGuinty is poised today to announce a $40-billion nuclear construction program for this province — though we’re still paying for the one in this photo. People talk about the ugliness of wind farms, but your average nuclear plant has got to be a close second. Actually, PNGS would have come in first place, ‘cept the judging seems to have been rigged. This issue is not over.

Update: Make that $46 billion! How is it they can announce the cost before they’ve done feasability studies or know how many new reactors are “needed”?

…on March 23, 2003. The following is a memory, though only a few things have changed: Shock and Awe is history, though bombs are still exploding in Iraq; the local Krispy Kreme folded a year ago or so (good riddance); most days I hop on the VIVA (long may it run!). The intertwined issues of development, energy and transporation are just as perplexing as ever. Same as it ever was:

The morning after the Americans started dropping bombs on Iraq, I woke up to my daily conundrum: how to get to work. It sounds absurd. My life is ruled by routine in so many ways, but I can not settle on a single, preferred method of transporting my carcass to and from work. It all started four years ago when I turned in my parking permit after a price increase made busing more economical than parking. So now, depending on the time of year and the schedule of the day, I may take a bus, a bike, a train, a car, walk or rely on the kindness of friends. During the worst winter storms, I’m happy to share a taxi if one can be hired.

But on the morning after the Shock and Awe campaign began, I thought I might drive. I hadn’t started the old wreck for a few days, and was thinking about the fact that it was overdue for brake work. Braking was not going to be a problem though, because on this particular morning the engine cranked but would not catch. “No problem”, I decide, “I’ll hop on the Vaughan bus.” But as I close the car door I see the #4 pulling away from the corner. “No worries”, says I. “I’ll just walk up to Yonge and catch a GO bus south to Steeles.” Seven minutes later, I see the “C” bus crossing the Yonge and Major Mac intersection — the bus is kitty-corner to where I’m standing, waiting for the light to change. An SUV honks loudly and I’m startled to see an old Chinese man crossing against the red, causing the SUV to miss the left-turn arrow. The old man is stranded on the traffic island for a few minutes until the lights change once more. He seems relieved when the small tide of pedestrians, me among them, catches up. But the “C” bus is long gone by the time I get to the corner, so I decide to walk a few stops along Yonge until the next one shows up.

You can see a long way from the summit of Richmond Hill, but all I see is a continuous line of bumper-to-bumper tail lights snaking their way southward through the morning haze. I follow at a brisk pace, past Block Busters, past the Krispy Kreme where another line of cars idles and puffs in anticipation of coffee and sugar. Now my current plan is to hoof it to 16th Avenue and catch a Vaughan 85 bus west to Keele. The 85s don’t run as often however and I wait 15 minutes for the next one. But, it’s an 85A and only goes as far as Bathurst. The morning’s happy-go-lucky sheen is beginning to oxidize as I realize how late I’m going to be. I notice that i have subconsciously started counting the number of cars, vans and SUVs with just one occupant. If my car had only started, I know I would have counted myself among them. Mostly, I just want to get away from the noise and out of this air. I take two minutes respite at the closest Tim Horton’s and resolve to wait for the next “C” bus. It arrives within the minute and chugs down Yonge, lurching to a halt at every stop along the way.

As we bump along, I keep thinking about Iraq and North Korea, about oil and SUVs, water and the Oak Ridges Moraine, brown-outs and dozens of recently approved housing projects. I remember that the Pickering nuclear plant underwent an emergency shutdown on or about the same day our provincial government announced they would not recall the legislature. All of these items seem to be interwoven, but I can’t seem to make sense of it, can’t make the necessary connections. I’m too overwhelmed by a mental picture of the throbbing red arteries and veins of tail lights that flow in and out of this city every day. And when the Steeles West bus appears just as I step on to the sidewalk, it feels like the only thing that has connected all morning.