Small-scale, on-site solar, wind and geothermal are the sustainable options for new generation, for all sectors. These also jump-start a green economy. We don’t need to destroy rivers and fish, clam beds and halibut grounds in the sea (as with the wind project off Haada Gwaii), waste forests and farmlands, building centralized generation and costly high-voltage transmission lines, poisoning us all with pesticides and electromagnetic fields. (One cause of the worldwide decline in bees is electromagnetic radiation interfering with their magnetic organs by which they navigate.)

Centralized generation and transmission, including solar, wind, and the misleadingly named “small hydro” are all about multi-national corporate profits. These profits would be even greater than with conventional fuels since renewable energy is free.

Let’s not forget export, which the Liberals have already admitted would be part of Site C. This is the same mistake BC made with the previous mega-dams. We have been exporting much of that electricity for many years at one cent a kilowatt-hour while BC consumers paid eight cents. California was paying only the cost of transmission and “incremental costs” while BC consumers paid the capital costs. This is no doubt still going on in some form. And no doubt we will again be paying the capital costs.

We must also take into account the free trade condition by which we will have to continue to export as much energy as we always have, regardless of our own needs.

Environmentalists, concerned citizens, unions, NDP, Greens, and even Liberals, need not be at each others’ throats on this question. Multi-national corporations need not forego profits. We can all invest in the sustainable options. A recent study by global energy expert Amory Lovins and his team (partly funded by corporations including Shell Oil) found 256 ways that small-scale generation is more profitable than centralized systems (smallisprofitable.com). Small-scale renewables added to the existing grid provide the further advantage of stabilizing and greening it, making it less vulnerable to black-outs.

The Good News is: the ecological solution is the economic solution, and also the ethical.