At about 14 minutes into the recent Federal Leaders’ debate there was a back and forth between Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, and Maxime Bernier, leader and founder of the People’s Party of Canada, in which Bernier — who advocates for free-market policies, liberalized trade and private property rights — called […]
Tomorrow, a ship carrying wood chips from Sheet Harbour will arrive in Rizhao, China. That’s terrible news for Nova Scotia’s forests
According to Marine Tracker — and apparently unbeknownst to the provincial government — Nova Scotia is now exporting wood chips to China, something that’s new for 2019. The “wood chips carrier,” the FP Wakaba, loaded up with chips and left the port in Sheet Harbour Nova Scotia at the end of August. With a transit […]
The Climate Emergency
Part 2: Why growth, even if it is green, is not enough
This is the second of a four-part series. Read Part 1 here. The day before the recent global school strike for the climate — where 10,000 people, mostly young, took to the streets in Halifax demanding climate action — there was a two-hour “emergency debate” in the Nova Scotia legislature about the “global emergency,” in […]
The climate emergency: Why it’s time to ditch the language of economic growth
This is the first in a 4-part series exploring climate change and economic growth, green or otherwise. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel set in a near-future totalitarian state, the women are subjugated in various horrific ways including that they are allowed to move around anywhere within town but are unaware that […]
The Archaeology of Loss
How industrial logging in the Mi’kmaq heartland is destroying a lot more than trees
“We were in wonderful moose country now.” At least this is how Albert Bigelow Paine described the Nova Scotia landscape he and three others journeyed through in his 1908 book The Tent Dwellers. The book tells the true story of a June trout fishing trip led by two guides, Charlie Charlton and Del Thomas, who […]
Truth Be Told: Nova Scotia’s forest department hires a PR firm with forest industry ties to help it with transparency
Cover photo: recent drone shot of a clearcut located between Kejimkujik National Park and Lake Rossignol. Photo courtesy Jeff Purdy. The Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry (DLF) recently hired DG Communications, a public relations firm, to assess the department’s progress in meeting the recommendations of William Lahey’s Independent Review of Forest Practices, specifically […]
Forest Confidential
An investigation into Nova Scotia’s biomass harvest data and how the numbers aren’t adding up
A few months ago I reviewed a film that has been circulating the province about the growing use of forest biomass as a form of so-called renewable energy. The film — Burned: Are Trees the New Coal? — reported on how the biomass industry sells itself as green by making two bogus claims: it uses […]
Pulp Culture
How Nova Scotia’s Faustian bargain with the pulp industry may leave the sawmills in ruins
I wonder if Billy Freeman, a sixth generation saw-miller with 15 years experience, saw this juncture coming. A few weeks ago, Freeman, the process improvement manager at Harry Freeman and Son Ltd. in Greenfield, Nova Scotia wrote an illuminating op-ed in the Chronicle Herald supporting Northern Pulp in its request for an extension of the […]
Dalhousie researcher breaks silence over pulp mill’s cancer-causing air emissions
Dalhousie University researcher Emma Hoffman has come forward to defend her 2017 ambient air quality study about cancer-causing air emissions detected near the Northern Pulp mill after finding that her study was “misrepresented” in the mill’s recently registered Environmental Assessment [EA] for its proposed effluent treatment facility. In Part 3 of the “Dirty Dealing” series, I […]
By Any Other Name: Nova Scotia’s Department of Lands and Forestry just made “Clearcuts” disappear
Nova Scotians who signed up to receive proposed harvest plans on Crown land might have noticed some disturbing changes recently. As of a few days ago the maps no longer specify whether a proposed cut is a “clearcut” or not. The word was removed from the legend and the list of harvest prescription types. This […]