Stop the threats - I'll use my air-conditioner if I want to!

So you're sitting there minding your own business, watching your favourite television show. Then this commercial comes on showing you what happened during "the great blackout", asking you whether or not you want it to happen again. It's almost like the Ontario government is trying to shame you into reducing your power consumption so we can avoid over-stressing the power grid.

The temperature exceeded 30 degrees yesterday and it was humid. Of course, the lead news story on CFRA early this morning was that we set a new power consumption record for the month of May, eclipsing the mark set only two years ago. Accordingly, we are being told to moderate our demand for electricity.

I re-issue my request for an answer from the City of Ottawa and the Government of Ontario: why should I? I won't. My contribution to the savings was to replace most of my lightbulbs with those compact-fluorescent lights. As for my air conditioner, I installed one on Sunday and the second one is going in tonight. Once they're on, they will not be turned off when it's hot and humid.

If the officials want to save the province from itself, they only need to look at themselves in the mirror. Take a drive up Prince of Wales Drive some day. Head up Strandherd and see how many houses have been built in the last eight months. Go out Innes Road in the east end and see how that area has been transformed since the last time you were out there. If I really cared to make my point even more, I'd ask the City to dig up the number of new housing starts since 2000. Assuming that our problems really started a couple of years ago (and they didn't), we added tens of thousands of new homes to the power grid in Ottawa alone. How much electricity do the new "power centres" or big box lots consume?

If we were in such a bind, we would halt construction because each new house brings more computers, televisions, air conditioners, clothes dryers, dozens of light bulbs and countless other electricity sucking appliances onto the grid.

So leave me alone, everyone. I refuse to have difficulty sleeping at night. After a hard day's work or a tough (!) day on the golf course, I seek refuge in my nice air conditioned home. After turning over a good part of my salary to taxes I'll spend the rest on cool air. Go find a way to provide it. If you can't, government, stop erecting towers like those beside the Queensway near Bronson. Stop approving 2,000 unit subdivisions. If you don't, and new homes and businesses are added to the power grid where farm fields once stood, don't tell me to conserve. If resources are stretched so thin I supposedly need to turn my air conditioning down, don't continually add more burden to the system. Once that happens, I'll think about doing more. Until then, the government is the problem. Not me or my Danbys.