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Green Energy

Friday October 16, 2020

October 24, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 16, 2020

Make Canada’s electric vehicle bet pay off

The federal and Ontario governments have just rolled the dice — using taxpayers’ money — in hopes of hitting it big in the electric vehicle industry.

November 22, 2019

After anteing up $295 million apiece, they recently convinced Ford Motor Co. of Canada to commit about $1.4 billion of its own money to start manufacturing these zero-emission machines and the batteries that power them at its Oakville plant by 2025. 

It’s a smart, and admirably non-partisan, gamble on the part of these governments that could preserve thousands of Canadian auto-sector jobs and grow the economy while doing something just as important — fighting climate change.

But if they want this steep, $590-million bet to pay off, they have to do more than just put up money. It’s not as easy as saying if you build it they’ll buy it. 

While there are plenty of hybrid and fully electric vehicles on the market, only about 0.5 per cent of the 23 million passenger vehicles on Canadian roads are electric. There are strong reasons more Canadians haven’t leapt behind the wheel of an EV, reasons Ottawa and Queen’s Park need to address.

October 3, 2020

For starters, electric vehicles are generally more expensive to buy than the ones driven by the internal combustion engines that are doing so much to heat up this planet. When it comes to range, most EVs can’t travel nearly as far on a full-charge as their gasoline-driven rivals on a full tank, though the gap is decreasing. And the number of electric recharging stations is pitifully small — just a fraction of the number of gas stations out there.

These negatives shouldn’t make anyone a naysayer about the future of Canada’s electric car and battery industry. It is, in fact, visionary for our nation to embrace what will surely be the technology of the future. Unfortunately there are no givens in the global auto sector and too often good intentions on the parts of governments and even industrial gurus don’t pan out. 

February 27, 2020

Canada badly lags behind other countries, such the United States, Germany, Japan and especially China in making EVs. When the current federal Liberal government asked every single EV manufacturer in the world to move to Canada, the answer was consistently no.

But there’s an upside to the fact that Ford Motor’s first zero-emission vehicles won’t roll of the line in Oakville for another five years. That gives the federal and Ontario governments a half decade to ensure their — your — investment ultimately pays off.

Canada needs recharge stations, lots of them. Establishing and paying for more of this essential infrastructure should be part of the federal Liberals’ plan for rebuilding post-pandemic Canada. 

Perhaps they could partner with existing gas stations. If their owners give the matter some thought they’ll realize they, too, have a stake in transitioning away from petroleum-based fuels.

Programs could be established or beefed up across the country to help homeowners as well as condo and apartment complexes, to install their own recharging facilities. In addition, the federal government should review its current rebate program for people buying electric vehicles to determine if it’s working and even if it should be enhanced.

Finally, attention must also be paid to the Canadian mining companies that produce the minerals, such as cobalt, nickel and lithium, that will go into the electric vehicle batteries. Do they require help in meeting what could be a significant new demand?

When it comes to electric vehicles, Ottawa and Queen’s Park may feel that, as Ford Motor once proclaimed, they have “a better idea.” They need to back it up. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: 2020-34, automobiles, climate change, cuts, Doug Ford, electric, environment, EV, Ford, Green Energy, Ontario, solar, vehicles, wind power

Saturday January 18, 2020

January 27, 2020 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 18, 2020

$60 payout ‘putting money back in parents’ pockets’, education minister says

May 4, 2019

The minister of education is offering parents money for childcare costs incurred during rotating teachers’ strikes.

Stephen Lecce says parents can apply for amounts from $25 to $60 per day for children under twelve.

Lecce says if all unions were to walk out, subsidies for childcare would amount to $48 million a day.    

“Just for clarity, every day that all unions withdraw services, that full withdraw saves the government $60 million dollars in salaries,” Lecce said. “So the concept here is we know that’s not our money, it’s our tax dollars, we’re using it. It’s the savings from their withdrawal of service.”

November 22, 2019

Parents of pre-schoolers at school-based child-care centres affected by the strikes will get the most money. Those with children in grades 1 through 7 will get less and parents of high school students will get nothing.

Lecce said the government’s motivation for the payout was to put money “back in the pockets of working people in Ontario.”

“At the end of the day the greatest constituency that bears the costs of this are parents and middle and low-income families who have to find childcare on short order,” he said.

As for criticisms that the payout was a bribe to parents, Lecce said he wasn’t surprised it was being spun by teachers’ unions as such.

August 29, 2019

“I think union leaders, respectfully, must accept the premise that there’s a cost when a child is staying home,” he said. “We have examples, real human examples, of individuals and low-income families and single parent families where they have to take vacation days.”

“Those will eventually add up,” Lecce said. “So it is absolutely in the interests of the taxpayer to return that money to them to make their life a little bit better and a little less difficult during this time of turmoil.”

“And it underscores our commitment to standing with families against this escalation.” (CBC) 

 

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: 2020-02, austerity, currency, debt, Doug Ford, education, Green Energy, money, Ontario, spending, Stephen Lecce

Saturday September 26, 2015

September 25, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Saturday September 26, 2015 Local boosters have been successful in getting the eastern section of Burlington Street dubbed the Tesla Expressway, for the Serbian inventor of the AC current. The stretch will be an "expressway" in name only since the speed limit won't be raised. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) Hamilton, Speed Limits, Burlington Street, expressway, Nicola Tesla, electricity, hipster, Green energy, industry

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday September 26, 2015

Local boosters have been successful in getting the eastern section of Burlington Street dubbed the Tesla Expressway, for the Serbian inventor of the AC current. The stretch will be an “expressway” in name only since the speed limit won’t be raised. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

 

Posted in: Hamilton Tagged: Burlington Street, electricity, expressway, Green Energy, Hamilton, hipster, industry, Nicola Tesla, Speed Limits

Monday June 24, 2013

June 24, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

Monday June 24, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday June 24, 2013

Kathleen Wynne backing away from Ontario Green Energy Act

It’s always instructive to see how a government frames an announcement that is backtracking on one of its own initiatives.

Conveniently for the Ontario Liberals, they are amassing considerable experience in this regard.

So, when the government on Thursday dropped the news that it was restructuring its 2010 wind-power deal with Samsung, it presented it in terms of extended job commitments and savings to electricity ratepayers. Samsung was guaranteeing jobs until 2016, instead of 2015, and the government was now only committing to buy $6-billion of Samsung’s renewable power at well above market rates, down from $9.7-billion in the original contract. Hooray for savings!

Those extended job commitments, though, are a result of Samsung’s having missed targets in the original contract; it now has more time to meet them. And that reduction in spending? It comes as Samsung, which won the original contract absent a competition, agrees to drop its own investment in the province from $7-billion to $5-billion, with projects expected to generate 1,369 megawatts of energy, down steeply from 2,500 megawatts in the first deal.

Ontario will be paying less, and receiving less. This is probably not the result of a particularly hard-fought negotiation.

What’s more notable are the things that the announcement from Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli did not mention, for example the 16,000 jobs that the original contract was said to create when it was announced in 2010. (Source: The National Post)

Posted in: Ontario Tagged: Dalton McGuinty, energy, Green Energy, Kathleen Wynne, Ontario, Ontario Liberal Party, Samsung, wind power

April 30, 2007

April 30, 2007 by Graeme MacKay

A case of how the mania around all things green has caused politically expedient governments to appear as though they’re doing good for the environment, when in fact, the opposite may be true. Here’s an article from this past weekend’s Financial Post:

The compact fluorescent light bulb nightmare
by Steven Milloy

How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour — unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn’t include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.

Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter’s bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.

Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a “low-ball” estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began “gathering finances” to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn’t cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.

Given that the replacement of incandescent bulbs with CFLs in the average U.S. household is touted as saving as much as US$180 annually in energy costs — and assuming that Bridges doesn’t break any more CFLs — it will take her more than 11 years to recoup the cleanup costs in the form of energy savings.

The potentially hazardous CFL is being pushed by companies such as Wal-Mart, which wants to sell 100 million CFLs at five times the cost of incandescent bulbs during 2007, and, surprisingly, environmentalists.

It’s quite odd that environmentalists have embraced the CFL, which cannot now and will not in the foreseeable future be made without mercury. Given that there are about five billion light bulb sockets in North American households, we’re looking at the possibility of creating billions of hazardous waste sites such as the Bridges’ bedroom.

Usually, environmentalists want hazardous materials out of, not in, our homes. These are the same people who go berserk at the thought of mercury being emitted from power plants and the presence of mercury in seafood. Environmentalists have whipped up so much fear of mercury among the public that many local governments have even launched mercury thermometer exchange programs.

As the activist group Environmental Defense urges us to buy CFLs, it defines mercury on a separate part of its Web site as a “highly toxic heavy metal that can cause brain damage and learning disabilities in fetuses and children” and as “one of the most poisonous forms of pollution.”

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let’s not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.

We’ll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

Greenpeace also recommends CFLs while simultaneously bemoaning contamination caused by a mercury-thermometer factory in India. But where are mercury-containing CFLs made? Not in the United States, under strict environmental regulation. CFLs are made in India and China, where environmental standards are virtually non-existent.

And let’s not forget about the regulatory nightmare in the U.S. known as the Superfund law, the EPA regulatory program best known for requiring expensive but often needless cleanup of toxic waste sites, along with endless litigation over such cleanups.

We’ll eventually be disposing billions and billions of CFL mercury bombs. Much of the mercury from discarded and/or broken CFLs is bound to make its way into the environment and give rise to Superfund liability, which in the past has needlessly disrupted many lives, cost tens of billions of dollars and sent many businesses into bankruptcy.

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine “safety” standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to “safely” contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.

Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill? – Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

As each CFL contains five milligrams of mercury, at the Maine “safety” standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to “safely” contain all the mercury in a single CFL. While CFL vendors and environmentalists tout the energy cost savings of CFLs, they conveniently omit the personal and societal costs of CFL disposal.

Not only are CFLs much more expensive than incandescent bulbs and emit light that many regard as inferior to incandescent bulbs, they pose a nightmare if they break and require special disposal procedures. Yet governments (egged on by environmentalists and the Wal-Marts of the world) are imposing on us such higher costs, denial of lighting choice, disposal hassles and breakage risks in the name of saving a few dollars every year on the electric bill? – Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk-science expert and advocate of free enterprise, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Posted in: Canada, Ontario Tagged: CFLs, commentary, Dalton McGuinty, energy, Green Energy, incandescent, LEDs, Stephen Harper

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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