Wind farm opponents in Southwestern Ontario have got a strong feeling that clear public anger — demonstrated at the polls — will spell an end to any further expansion of the ugly, expensive and inefficient alternative energy source. The London Free Press says that after a long losing streak before environmental review tribunals and courts, activists trying to halt industrial wind farms say they sense the political ground is shifting in their favour. They say power rates have become a hot urban issue and the Liberal government is taking notice. “It looks like this will be the last. I don’t know how the government could possibly justify more (such contracts),” said Jane Wilson, president of Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of groups opposed to industrial wind farm development in the province. She’s talking about the byelection loss for the Liberals in Scarborough Rouge-River. Accountants blame the government’s headlong plunge into expensive wind energy with driving up the cost of power in Ontario at least 70 percent in less than a decade.
