The Ontario government keeps exaggerating the impact of Ontario’s coal plant closures on air pollution and global warming. The fact remains that there are over one hundred coal fired power plants in US states adjoining Ontario. At last check, pollutants did not respect borders.

As far as the global issue of CO2 emissions is concerned, there are about 50,000 plants in the world with another 1400 planned or under construction. If climate scientists have it right, the 30 million Tons of CO2 emitted annually by Ontario’s coal plants would have impacted global temperatures by 0.00005°C annually, or about one degree per 22,000 years.

Feel-good symbolic or substantive? You decide.