Site C is a cataclysmic mistake not only in view of our need for farmland in the coming convergence of climate change and peak oil in the next 10 to 30 years. It is wasteful in every other way—for the usual political reasons of corporate profit.

Energy efficiency is the first solution to our energy needs. Worldwide, we waste more than half of the electricity we generate (details at Rocky Mountain Institute: rmi.com.) A study carried out by a coalition of community organizations in co-operation with BC Hydro in the late 80’s found a conservative estimate of 44% wasted in BC. The thousands of residential and commercial construction projects alone, if built to energy efficiency standards, would save untold amounts of future demand. Converting residential, commercial and industrial operations, including BC Hydro, to energy efficiency will create thousands of new jobs, businesses, and industries, and stimulate a sustainable economy.

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.