In May 2021, Dalhousie University issued a tender for “sustainable biomass” to feed the bioenergy plant on its agricultural campus in Truro. At the end of July 2021, the university quietly awarded the contract — worth $1,318,187.50 — to J.D. Irving and Wagner Forest NS. This marked a departure for Dalhousie’s biomass plant, which for […]
Proposed Wentworth Valley wind farm gets blowback
While local group fears negative effects, Northern Pulp stands to profit from the giant wind project because it’s on Northern Pulp land purchased with a loan from Nova Scotians.
Let’s start with a quick Nova Scotia quiz. Question #1: What do the following three things have in common? (1) A large new wind farm proposed for Wentworth Valley, (2) an open pit gold mine at Moose River in Halifax Regional Municipality that is owned by Australia’s St Barbara Ltd and operated by its subsidiary […]
Paper Excellence’s very big deal
Northern Pulp’s parent company is set to acquire the North American pulp and paper giant Domtar. While the acquisition is getting very little media attention in Canada, around the world many people are worried about it — for many good reasons.
It is a Very Big Deal. At 10am on Thursday, July 29, at a special virtual meeting, shareholders of Domtar, a giant in the North American pulp and paper industry, will vote on whether to accept the sale of all the corporation’s issued and outstanding shares of common stock to Paper Excellence for US$55.50 per […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Point, Click, Evict
Morning File, Thursday, October 24, 2019
News 1. Crowns strike The province’s crown attorneys have gone on strike. The government says the action is illegal and is seeking an injunction to get them back to work. Writing in The Star Halifax, Taryn Grant explains: About 80 per cent of members of the Nova Scotia Crown Attorneys’ Association (NSCAA) voted in favour […]
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 […]
McNeil government is moving slow with greenhouse gas reduction plan
Details are wanting, industry is worried, and regional cooperation is sidelined.
Nova Scotia continues to resist a sales pitch from Ottawa to sign on to its system for reducing emissions starting in January 2019. That resistance comes despite a warning different carbon pricing regimes within Atlantic Canada could drive up administrative costs for companies such as Irving Oil, Wilson Fuels, Northern Pulp, and Lafarge Cement. Those...
Nova Scotia’s cap-and-trade system to go easy on big corporate polluters
Legislation introduced by the McNeil government to enable setting up a cap-and-trade system to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions as part of a Trudeau directive to slow climate change was debated briefly in the Legislature this week. What is missing from Bill 15 — “An Act to Amend Chapter 1 of the Acts of 1994-95,...