I've criticized the NDP's carbon subsidy (here, here, and here,), but I understand the value of keeping campaign promises, even dumb ones. In my contrary view, public cynicism about politicians is so deep, it threatens to destroy the minimal level of public trust democracy needs to survive. This may be why the Tories and the Parliamentary Press Gallery have been so successful at drumming up absurd faux-outrage at the prospect of a fall election. So even as two of the Dexter government's promises (keeping all rural emergency rooms open and using tax rebates to encourage electricity consumption) make me shudder, I...

29 September, 2009
Bruce Wark's defense of the NDP subsidy on dirty, coal-fired electricity as a way to help the poor drew fire from several readers. In a minute, one reader corrects a factual error that tripped up both Wark and Contrarian. But what most objected to what is we might call The Wark Principle:
You don’t tax necessities, then ask poor people to apply for rebates. That’s why we don’t tax groceries. How is electricity any different?
Contrarian reader Martin MacKinnon thinks Wark's objection to taxing necessities is ill-considered:
There are indeed far too many Nova Scotians who can ill afford the necessities of life. However, why should the rest of us benefit from their poverty? Wark seems to miss an important point. If those of us (including Wark and I) who could well afford to, do not pay tax on power, then governments who need to pay for things like health care and education will have to collect those taxes elsewhere. We need tax breaks for the necessities of life to be targeted at those who need help, not at the rest of us who don't.
After the jump, a more vehement reader, and a factual correction.
29 September, 2009

A few weeks ago, I posted a critique of an opinion piece in the August 25 edition of AllNovaScotia.com [subscription required] by Prof. Larry Hughes of the Dalhouse University's Computer Engineering Department. Hughes is currently toiling as a visiting professor of Global Energy Systems at Uppsala University in Sweden. Shockingly, Contrarian is not yet daily reading in that particular corner of Scandinavia, so he only recently learned of my comments. Hughes writes: Contrary to what you have written, [my article in AllNovaScotia.com] has nothing to with NSP's existing 2010 or 2013 requirements.  The article is about NSP's new 25% renewables...

28 September, 2009

Green Party leader Elizabeth May likes to deride clean coal technology as "George Bush's favorite techno-fix" for climate change. But a new documentary from the Australian Broadcasting Company says the Bush administration actually undermined clean coal, even as it pretended to support the technology. Coal is our most abundant conventional energy resource, also our dirtiest. It contributes about half of greenhouse gas production in Nova Scotia, about 30 percent worldwide. So a technology that let us use this resource without producing greenhouse gas emissions would be a huge breakthrough in efforts to slow climate change. In 2007, MIT produced a study called,...

20 September, 2009

The Times of London reports that the World Bank is pumping billions into the construction of coal-fired power plants in India, Botswana, and South Africa, despite a recent bank report citing the disproportionate impact of climate change on third world countries. The bank’s World Development Report says: “Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change — a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared. Increasing access to energy and other services using high-carbon technologies will produce more greenhouse gases, hence more climate change.” The report says that between 75 and 80 per cent of...

19 September, 2009

Jeff Pinhey suggests Nova Scotia take a page from the "IMBY syndrome" he observed on while riding the Train à Grande Vitesse from Paris to Amsterdam. The Dutch, who arguably know as much about windmills as anyone, choose to put their power generating ones in places where there already is a lot of background noise:  along a train line and urban freeway.  This is one of what must have been 20 that followed the rail line. Probably can't even tell they make a noise here. I find it puzzling that we seem to be forcing our windmills into areas as remote as...

16 September, 2009

Alistair Watt writes: The negative effects of living next to a wind power generating station have been known for some time. Consequently, to label opposition to them on that basis as NIMBY is unfair. Not In Anyone's Back Yard (NIABY) would be more appropriate. OK, let's review. We have to do something about electrical generation in Nova Scotia, because we currently burn the dirtiest possible fuel, coal, to produce about 75 percent of our power, and greenhouse gasses pose a grave and urgent risk to the future of the planet.  However: We can't use hydro, because there are no big rivers left to...

16 September, 2009

Two weeks ago, AllNovaScotia.com, the excellent online journal run by daughter-father team Caroline Wood and David Bentley, ran the latest in a series of occasional pieces by Larry Hughes, a computer engineering coordinator at Dalhousie University. Hughes is something of an energy policy gadfly. He expects energy will soon be in short supply globally, so he places a lot of emphasis on energy security, by which he appears to mean energy produced within Nova Scotia. Nevertheless, Hughes opposes Nova Scotia Power's plan to mix wood waste with coal to burn in its thermal generating plants. His piece, in the August 25 edition...

10 September, 2009

Elizabeth May is moving to British Columbia. From both provinces' perspectives, it truly is more blessed to give than to receive....

10 September, 2009

- Carol Kennedy photo Cape Breton's Fall colors peak between the first and second weekends of October, and this year foliage tourists have four worthy festivals to chose from. The Hike the Highlands festival offers 23 guided hikes in a variety of distances, difficulties, and locations around the Cabot Trail from September 11 to 20. The festival also features workshops on nature photography, GPS, and geocaching, together with various social and musical events. The first annual inaugural Cabot Trail Writers' Festival in North River, October 2 to 4, features readings and workshops by authors Donna Morrissey (Kit's Law & What They Wanted),  Douglas...

09 September, 2009
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