Canadian Unitarians for
Social Justice
A
national faith-based organization founded in support of Unitarian values
P.O. Box
40011, Ottawa, ON, K1V 0W8
President, Rev. Frances Deverell president@cusj.org
August 9, 2013
To Premier Kathleen
Wynne, Bob Chiarelli, Ontario Minister of Energy, and the Ontario Energy Board
Canadian Unitarians for Social
Justice (CUSJ) (http://www.cusj.org) is a
national, liberal religious organization founded to actively promote Unitarian
values through social action. CUSJ
is a membership organization and when it speaks, it speaks only for its members
and not for either the Canadian Unitarian Council or for any particular
Unitarian Congregation.
Unitarians affirm the fundamental
unity and interdependence of all existence.
We see this reality in the
interconnections between people of all continents in our globalized world. We see the peoples of the world as one
community in which the security of each nation is entwined with the security of
all others. We believe the greatest
threat to human security is global warming and climate change. We believe the overwhelming preponderance of
scientists who tell us humans are responsible for the speed with which it is
occurring.
The CUSJ Board believes we must all make it
a priority to transform our ways of living toward sustainable economies that
drastically reduce our energy consumption and the pollution of greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere. As a people, we
must take responsibility for ourselves. The
well-being of our children and their children and their ability to enjoy life
on this earth is at stake.
The principles of justice and the inherent
worth and dignity and equality of all people requires that everyone should have
equal access to the basic necessities of life.
If all areas of the world continue to focus on growth as the route to
well-being, humanity will be on a collision course with the natural world. We in the developed world have long used more
than our share of energy and resources. If we are to enjoy the fruits of growth, it
must be through innovation and transformation to a new economy. We must take immediate and dramatic steps to
change our ways of living, to reduce greenhouse gases put into the environment,
and to reduce our consumption. Ontario
can aggressively work towards this goal in a number of ways:
- Focus on
conservation. We
are pleased to see Ontario put emphasis on conservation. It is important and we must do even more
in this area. Review all policies
with an eye to reducing consumption.
Building codes must require high efficiency standards. New appliances must be state of the art
low energy users. Businesses and
manufacturers must be strongly encouraged through a combination of carbon taxes
and conservation incentives. Home
retrofit programs should be renewed and expanded. City design needs to encourage low-energy
public transportation and communities where people work where they
live. We need to move away from
consumerism and militarism toward a different economic base.
- A strong
public education program should back up these types of
initiatives. If this kind of
aggressive program has to be sold, show leadership. Sell it.
Help Ontarians to understand why we have to go this route.
- Produce
solid information. Ontario
should ensure that the best information on all sources of power is
gathered and published in useable formats so that people at all levels –
individuals, businesses, and governments can make the best decisions. This information must not be biased
toward one industry or another. The
gathering of this data should be publicly funded.
- Congratulations
to Ontario for eliminating coal as a source of
power generation. Finish the job. This is a great success story to celebrate.
- Ontario
should halt its plans for nuclear power development. There are many reasons for this. (see CUSJ brief to the Darlington
commission: Nuclear Power Brief 2011 03 31 CUSJ.) Nuclear power uses far more greenhouse
gases to produce than is claimed if you consider cradle to grave
processes. It is expensive to
produce and costs are escalating.
It is uninsurable against disaster.
The Fukushima plant in Japan continues to pose great risks to human
health around the world despite great efforts to contain the
radiation. We do not want to put
our Great Lakes area at risk. There
is still no solution in sight for nuclear waste. Burying it in the Great Lakes Basin is
completely unacceptable. Ontario
should set as a goal to reduce the percentage of Nuclear Power in the mix
down to zero as the plants we have age and must be decommissioned.
- Replace
the baseload power generated by nuclear power with hydropower
purchased from the James Bay area of Quebec as much as possible.
- Bring up
the investment in both wind, solar, and small local
water projects as well as biogas, heat pumps, and other sources of
renewable energy as quickly as possible.
Learn as much as we can from countries in the lead. Encourage innovation and new technology
for power generation, storage, and for a smart grid to distribute the
power. Encourage new organization
structures such as local energy cooperatives to help generate this
power. Make Canadians competitive
in a new world.
- Encourage
localized power generation wherever possible according to the
particular situation and conditions in each place and each home and
business. Massive wind farms may be
suitable in some locations but more of our power should be developed house-by-house
and business-by-business. The
long-term strategy should be for a decentralized system—a flexible system
that can increase or decrease power as demand changes.
- While, in the short term, an emphasis on
natural-gas generated power may be necessary as the “cleanest” of the
carbon-based fuels, it would be better if we can develop the new, emerging
hydrogen potentialities. In the
long term, we must eliminate all
carbon-based fuels. They should
be reserved for those uses for which there are absolutely no other
alternatives. A long-range plan
should include phasing out carbon-based fuels.
The
climate crisis can be seen as a terrible threat or a great opportunity. We believe it is the responsibility of
liberal religious organizations such as our own to remind our leaders that a
better world is possible – a world where we stop damaging the capacity of the
earth to sustain life and where we recognize our interconnection and our
interdependence with all life as we know it.
It is not too late to take action.
We have a choice.
Our
current economic and political priorities are generating massive disparities of
wealth and poverty, in Canada and around the world. We allow a few people with
concentrated wealth and power to control the public agenda in their own
interests, without any accountability. We
destroy our own nest. We foster human
greed and ignore the consequences. We
will not be able to ignore those consequences forever.
Increasing numbers of extreme weather events are telling us that we are
reaching a tipping point. Hurricane
Sandy in 2012 in New York, and terrible floods in India, and in Calgary in 2013
are but two examples. Who knows who will
be hit next or how much it will cost?
The time for serious action in the public interest is now.
Will
you, the leaders we have elected to represent us in a democratic country, take
the necessary action to ensure that Ontario has a healthy future for many
years? Our long-term energy policy is a
critical element in ensuring such a future for our children and
grandchildren. We are asking you commit
yourself to doing everything you can to promote a renewable energy economy for
Ontario and to the phasing out of both Nuclear power and carbon fuels. We join with ClimateFast
(http://www.climatefast.ca) and many other grass roots organizations in asking
for your pledge to a healthy energy future.
In
faith,
Rev.
Frances Deverell,
President,
Canadian Unitarians For Social Justice
