Ontario’s Liberal government may as well decree everyone in their province will receive a free flying unicorn and that sugar-free, organic lemonade will flow from kitchen taps. They’d have no less chance of keeping those promises than of keeping the promise – leaked Monday – of eliminating natural gas furnaces and gasoline powered cars by 2030.

In the minds of Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Environment Minister Glenn Murray, it’s as if there exist two equally practical and convenient ways of heating homes, powering manufacturing plants and fueling vehicles and planes. One is carbon-based energies such as oil, coal and natural gas, while the other is alternate sources such as wind, solar and cow farts.

Two centuries ago Western countries simply chose the wrong option. Now all that’s needed to switch is the magic wand of Big Government.

That kind of thinking makes the Ontario Liberals a millenarianist cult.

(Alberta’s NDP government is one, too. It’s hell-bent on following Ontario’s lead.)

Millenarianist cults believe total social change is possible if followers merely believe fervently enough. Forget the laws of physics, basic economics or even human nature. Eco-activists at the Ontario and Alberta legislatures are absolutely convinced the only thing standing between us and a glorious, zero-carbon paradise is the willpower of politicians (and the money of taxpayers).

On Monday, it was revealed the Wynne government is going to invest billions and billions of tax dollars on replacing gasoline-powered cars and trucks with ones that run solely on electricity. Moreover, builders of new homes and buildings will be heavily encouraged (read: bullied) to construct only homes and offices that are heated by electricity and geothermal.

In just over a decade, it will be illegal to heat new structures in Ontario with natural gas. In just over three decades, even existing residences will have to switch.

Why not demand all planes be converted to solar power? That’s no less unrealistic.

The impracticality of this can be seen in two existing Ontario green plans: ending coal-fired power generation and subsidizing electric cars.

In 2009, the same Ontario Liberals decreed an end to coal-fired power plants. To replace them, they have spent nearly $40 billion on alternative energy. Before Christmas, Ontario’s auditor general said all that money had produced “negligible environmental benefits.”

What the initiative did succeed in doing was give Ontario what one academic describes as “the worst electricity market in the world.” Electricity rates have doubled. As a result, as many as 200,000 well-paying manufacturing jobs have fled.

When it comes to electric cars, Ontario has been paying a subsidy of $8,500 per car for the past five years. In all that time, it has been able to convince fewer than 5,000 Ontarians to go electric.

Now, despite that failure, the Wynne government imagines it can convince 1.7 million consumers to buy electric cars in the next 14 years. That’s one-third more than all the electric cars that have ever been sold in the entire world in history.

Would you want to try keeping a home in Timmins (or Grande Prairie) warm at minus-30 using electrical heating? Try travelling 600km in a battery-operated car in a Canadian winter?

Then there are such practical considerations as trade-based jobs. How, for instance, will Ontario businesses get goods to market if everyone else’s transport trucks are running on diesel and Ontario’s are being powered by… I don’t know, distilled sewage?

Meanwhile importers will stop shipping into the province if there are no longer any refuelling stations for their trucks.

But don’t confront the do-gooders of the eco-movement with such realities. Their belief in the evil of Big Oil and the virtue of all things green has become cultish.