18 May Subsidizing ‘the gravest threat to our environment’

“The gravest threat to our environment is climate change,” says the NDP election platform. So why is Darrell Dexter promising to subsidize electricity consumption by $28 million? That’s what it will cost taxpayers to remove the provincial share of the HST from electricity bills.

Seventy-five percent of Nova Scotia’s electricity is created by burning coal, the dirtiest fuel we have. Subsidize wind power, sure, or tidal, or mass transit. But a $28-million tax break for burning dirty coal at a time when climate change is “the gravest threat to our environment?” That’s cynical and irresponsible. Worse, it assumes voters are stupid, or selfish. Or both.

Wonder what Howard Epstein makes of all this?

[Disclosure: 1n 2008, I helped write the province’s Renewed Energy Strategy and its Climate Change Action Plan.]