TVO’s The Agenda episode “Achim Steiner: Ontario and the Green Economy”
TVO’s The Agenda episode “Achim Steiner: Ontario and the Green Economy”PC Leader Tim Hudak: “Energy politics is about economics and stop treating it like a social program. Quite frankly, we cannot continue to pursue green energy policies that unnecessarily drive up the cost for consumers and have punitive impacts on our broader economy.”
Someone just doesn’t get it, but, as UN Environment Programme leader Achim Seiner put it, voters are smarter than that. Subsidies are pervasive in all sectors of the energy economy. The world subsidizes $700B/yr for fossil fuels, whereas countries that have invested in infrastructure for renewables have seen their costs drop dramatically. For example, photovoltaics have come down 50% in cost last year and are predicted to come down another 50%.
Again, as Seiner eloquently describes, coal might appear cheaper, but once you factor in the added health care costs associated with pollution as well as the direction the world is going in in which emissions will be penalized in the global economy, the cost of continuing on our current course is far higher than Hudak might imagine.
