Thursday, June 9, 2016

From an Aesthetic Standpoint, Premier Wynne's "Green Utopia" Will Be Ugly as Sin and Vaguely Soviet-esque

Kevin Liblin describes it like this:
Towards the end of the 86-page “Five Year Climate Action Plan,” officially released by Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne on Wednesday, is an artist’s representation of what the province is intended to look like in 2050.  
Designed like a screenshot of a progressive policy-maker’s utopian video game, there are rows of condos — no sign of any single-family houses — cladded with solar panels and tapping the earth’s geothermal energy for warmth. Towering wind turbines spin overhead helping to power “low-carbon” businesses, bearing trite signs on their buildings like “Kleen Tech” or simply a logo of a green leaf. Commuters are whisked about on electric rail and electric buses. You have to look closely to find the cars being refueled with ethanol and renewable electricity; they’re outnumbered by the bicycles. Trees bloom everywhere, except in a small patch where they’ve been harvested “sustainably.” A sailboat coasts by the shoreline.  
And in the middle of all of it sits Queen’s Park, the control centre for this perfectly harmonious, carbonless Shangri-La.
Sounds ghastly--like a marriage made in Hades between Al Gore and Joseph Stalin (who, you'll recall, built another Utopia where there was nary a single-family home in sight, and which set out some pretty dreadful "five year action plans," too).

Ontario in 2050

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