All posts by Chris Tindal

Generating Controversy on the Waterfront

energy

I’ve co-authored “A Realistic Energy Plan for Toronto,” which is a response to the provincial government’s plan to build a gas-fired power plant on the waterfront called the Portlands Energy Centre. It’s also a response to other alternative plans which still propose building a generator on the waterfront, but making it smaller. (Our plan is getting a lot of attention, despite the fact that we can’t attach cash incentives to it.)

This Wednesday, April 12, from 7:30-9:30pm, the St. Lawrence Centre Forum is hosting a discussion about the plant and Toronto’s energy plan in general. Included on the panel will be Greg Allen, another co-author of the plan I worked on. Please attend if you’re able.

So it’s come to this

meta

Fine world, I’ll play your blogging game. But I don’t have to pretend to understand or like it.

I think my biggest hesitation is that part of me still feels like it’s a bad idea to broadcast ideas straight from the top of one’s head to the entire world (and, by entire world, I mean the small percentage of us with web access) without at least mulling them over a bit first. It wasn’t that long ago that you’d think before you spoke, and even then only a handful of people would hear you, without archiving your comments in perpetuity. (And yes, I’m aware of how obnoxious it is when 24-year-olds get nostalgic.)

I guess what I’m saying is, at their worst, blogs can make it really easy to quickly share half-baked ideas before you have a chance to think better of them. I think we’ll all just have to get to the point where we stop expecting people (and remember, for these purposes politicians are people too) to live a gaff-free existence, because that’s just not human.

I fully expect to use this blog to say lots of unintentionally stupid things, or things that I may believe at the time but will contradict later, all in the hopes of coming up with a good idea now and then. I hope it works out for us.

Oh, and every now and then I’ll still take the time to create some well-rounded thoughts too.