In 1964, Flai Kalenga Mbwenga went looking for some good grazing land. Mbwenga was a small-scale farmer who lives in northern Namibia, close to the Kavango River that forms part of the border between his country and neighbouring Angola. Like nearly all the rural people in his country, Mbwenga’s family’s livelihood came from small-scale and mixed...
Pieridae’s pipe dream
Pieridae Energy’s plans for a liquified natural gas plant in Nova Scotia sit in the sweet spot of an elaborate Rube Goldberg financing machine that requires Shell Oil offloading some aging gas wells in Alberta to a cash-strapped energy company living on the hope of sky-high gas costs in Germany years from now.
If the Halifax Examiner inbox is anything to go by, there is no shortage of critics of Pieridae Energy and its plans to pipe natural gas into Nova Scotia, build a $10-billion liquefied natural gas plant in Goldboro on the province’s Eastern Shore, and then ship the LNG to Germany, a project the Halifax Examiner […]
Atlantic Gold is going to court
The St. Barbara Limited company is facing 32 environmental charges, even as more complaints roll in.
Just over a month after the construction company contracted by Atlantic Gold to excavate clay for the tailings facility at its open pit gold mine at Moose River assured Krista Gillis of Mooseland that the excavation work wouldn’t cause any more sedimentation in a nearby brook, it has happened again. On Saturday, January 17, Gillis […]
Council preview: Uber rules, climate plan, cooling-off period for bureaucrats
Rules for Uber, a plan for climate change, and a cooling-off period for politicians and staff are all on the agenda for Halifax regional council’s meeting this week. The meeting, starting at 10am Tuesday, also includes an appeal hearing for a design review committee decision at 1pm and a public hearing on a Bedford Highway...
Ukrainian corruption and the Canso spaceport
Morning File, Tuesday, November 12, 2019
November subscription drive I was going to write a long thing this morning in support of our subscription drive, but got pulled away trying to make sense of the Ukrainian space industry. So I’ll keep it short. We need your money. Thanks. News 1. Waiting for Fitch “Bob Dylan didn’t need a weatherman to know […]
The Climate Emergency
Part 4: Our current economy can't address the crisis; what are we going to do about it?
Previously in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. It’s not often that I root for the anti-hero in a book, but it seems that as I neared the end of Jeremy Lent’s latest book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning — perhaps the longest book I’ve ever read at […]
Truly, no one much takes this supposed climate emergency seriously
Morning File, Monday, November 4, 2019
November subscription drive Through the Halifax Examiner’s first couple of years, I wrote Morning File every day. Then, the Examiner started hiring guest writers for Morning File when I was on vacation or out of town. More recently, other writers have become such a regular feature that we no longer call them “guests” — they’re […]
The Climate Emergency
Part 3: How to turn off the economic growth engine
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 […]
Halifax Mayor Mike Savage recognizes “Wrongful Conviction Day” but takes no action on the wrongful conviction his city is responsible for
Morning File, Monday, October 7, 2019
1. Boat Harbour “The day-by-day countdown to the closing of Boat Harbour happens on a large painting erected in front of the Pictou Landing First Nation band council office, reports Joan Baxter: The painting depicts Boat Harbour as it was before it was dammed (and damned) in 1966, transformed from a healthy tidal estuary to […]
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 […]