Thanks for the publicity
Iam grateful to Ryan O’Connor, a historical consultant, for introducing me and my 40-year-old organization, Energy Probe, to a young crop of readers at Vice, the go-to-place for millennials and unders. “A Look into Canada’s Most Controversial Environmental Organization,” his unusually long history of Energy Probe, is chock-a-block with insider tidbits from the 1970s and 1980s — just what Vice readers have been craving.
It is also unusually accurate — I counted but one factual error and/or distortion per 100 words, lower than the ratio for fake news.
Most of these errors, moreover, are quite trivial, such as the claim that I’m a policy expert for the Chicago-based Heartland Institute or that I had once apologized to a scientist for misquoting him (I did not and had no reason to).
O’Connor’s errors are understandable, since avoiding them would have required fact- checking and a close reading of documents. Fortunately, O’Connor provided a link to my “apology,” to allow careful readers to see his mistake for themselves.
I am also impressed that O’Connor was able to quote so many of my former colleagues from 1982 and earlier, before most Vice readers were born, and found no colleague to quote since.
He did find one quotable source in the 35-year period between 1982 and today — a customer of Toronto’s Green Beanery café who was willing to cite the views of an unnamed barista. That’s good enough for me.
O’Connor doesn’t explain, though, why luminaries such as Jane Jacobs, Margaret Laurence and David Suzuki served on the board of the Energy Probe Research Foundation during the period he describes us as having become “ecocapitalist” and a “libertarian stronghold” in thrall to the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Were Energy Probe’s directors too shallow to understand the organization? Or is O’Connor?
Contrary to O’Connor’s belief, over the last 40 years Energy Probe has never devi- ated from its original philosophy, that economic decisions must incorporate environmental costs.
That conviction over the decades led us to successfully stop uneconomic coal, oilsands and nuclear plants ( no new reactors have been built since we began our opposition).
We successfully led the campaign to dismantle Ontario Hydro, whose monopoly prevented economic wind, solar and cogeneration technologies.
Abroad, our foundation helped stop uneconomic hydro dams in Haiti and elsewhere that would have flooded farmers off their land.
We have throughout also been fierce promoters of government regulation over monopolies.
We lost our share of battles, too. Canada’s Nuclear Liability Act survived our 10- year- long challenge to its constitutionality. China’s Three Gorges Dam — arguably the single-most environmentally and economically destructive project ever undertaken — was in the end completed, after a battle we fought alongside our colleagues in China over the course of 20 years.
O’Connor is correct to call us “Canada’s most controver- sial environmental organization.”
Throughout the decades, we’ve been considered mavericks because we challenged the conventional wisdom; in virtually every area, we’ve been proven right over time.
My 1978 book, The Conserver Solution, is today considered motherhood — it proposed energy conservation and the conservation of resources.
Yet when it was published, CBC banned television commercials promoting its message on grounds that the ads were too controversial to be shown.
The ads, produced pro bono by a major advertis- ing agency, showed a planet increasingly polluted and at risk from wanton overuse of electricity.
We expect to be proven right again on the great conventional wisdom du jour — climate change.
In fact, the climate change industry is all but dead, even if its propagandists don’t yet realize it.
The fabulous subsidies that have fed the multinational operations pushing the global warming mantra are drying up in Europe and the U. S. Without its ability to plunder the public purse, there can be no climate change industry, and the fake news they spread will fade.
The real news, from the world’s very top scientists, and confirmed by satellite technology: Carbon dioxide, aka Nature’s fertilizer, greens the planet.
For Vice readers across the land who want to explore Vice’s version of history, there’s good news: On Feb. 28, the Green Beanery café’s Grounds for Thought debate series will host an evening featuring me and, I hope, Vice’s historical consultant, Ryan O’Connor. He hasn’t yet accepted our invitation, but he’ll doubtless want to come to defend his argument.
He may even learn of the good that can come when sound economic principles are allowed to weed out environmentally destructive projects.
So, save the date: 8 p. m. on Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 565 Bloor St. West, Toronto. Admission is free for Vice readers, and everyone else.
THROUGHOUT THE DECADES, WE’VE BEEN CONSIDERED MAVERICKS ... IN VIRTUALLY EVERY AREA, WE’VE BEEN PROVEN RIGHT OVER TIME.