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,...