Nova Scotia has leapt the bandwagon and launched a craptapulous economic stimulus package: $1.9 billion of vague promises, spread over three years. Fifty-million clams is for energy conservation and $1 billion for roads, bridges and highways. Two years ago, before the curtain was drawn to reveal that those big numbers in our gross domestic product […]
Chris Benjamin
Posted inNews + Opinion
Streetcar desires
“We can’t do the same things and use the same excuses that cars and roads work well,” says Patrick Klassen, a graduate student at Dalhousie’s School of Planning. He’s one of several students making an old idea new again: a Halifax Tram system. “We haven’t considered streetcars here per se,” HRM transit planning specialist Brian […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Religious eco-wars
Last week’s “Can We Be Good Without god” debate, a response to Metro Transit’s ban on atheist advertising, got me thinking big, post-modern questions such as: What does “good” mean? For “Sustainable City” purposes, let’s assume being good means living sustainably, allowing life to continue for as long as possible on this planet. To what […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Tracking our eco-footprints
Environmentalism is commonly criticized for replacing an overly human-centred worldview with one that ignores, even alienates, people. The ecological mindset is pie-in-the-sky long-term soothsaying at the expense of our immediate needs, critics say. Speaking with Daniel Rainham, an environmental science professor at Dalhousie University, it becomes apparent how wrong those critics are. Rainham is at […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Drive-thru madness
St. John’s city council started 2009 by becoming the first Canadian municipal power to pass a moratorium on drive-thrus. The problem was traffic: inconvenient, hazardous lineups right into the highway, especially around the ever-popular, always fresh Canadian wunderkind, Timmy Hortons. When the moratorium was approved, the mayor, deputy mayor and councillors lined up to proclaim […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Morse’s environmental shakeup
The shocker in Rodney MacDonald’s recent cabinet shuffle is the replacement of environment minister Mark Parent with veteran David Morse, who leaves natural resources. It’s a sign of an urgent environmental crisis that Morse considers this a promotion. As Ecology Action Centre director Mark Butler puts it: “Ten years ago, that’s a demotion.” After a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
On the house
There are secrets to greening Halifax in the coastal barrens of Peggys Cove. Scott MacIvor is conducting groundbreaking research there as part of his master’s degree in applied science at Saint Mary’s University: “I’m studying the plants.” MacIvor notes that coastal barrens plants live in similar conditions to those you might find on a Halifax […]
Posted inArts + Music
Ukrainian Christmas in October
Gaby’s suicide threats had subsided since her blissful relationship with her dead husband’s former boss, John Orange. John insisted on being called Johnny to spite his thin grey hair, low hanging spectacles and Norm Drabble belly, all of which collaborated to spite his status as a principal at a prestigious law firm. But life’s cycles […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sustainable green Santa
Ho ho ho. Time to paint Santa green. For a Sustainable Santa, Christmas shopping is a chore. Finding sustainable merchandise for a global economy is hard enough; figuring out who has been naughty and nice to the environment is a nightmare. Even David Suzuki has a travel itinerary that generates more carbon emissions than an […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
NSP: “Don’t blame us”
Last time in Sustainable City, human rights and environmental activists took on three multinational mining companies and Nova Scotia Power in a war of words. But Margaret Murphy, spokesperson for Nova Scotia Power, won’t comment on the controversial forced relocation of 700 villagers by Cerrejon mine in Colombia, from which our province imported about about […]
Posted inArts + Music
True crime
In 2000, when Michael Calce was 15, he used his superpower to take down yahoo.com, cnn.com, ebay.com, dell.com, etrade.com and amazon.com. Calce’s power is this: He can hack computer networks and turn them into an army of mechanized zombies—a “botnet,” in hacker parlance. His alter ego: mafiaboy. Calce was always a natural with computers. “The […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Blood coal
For a Nova Scotia coal miner, if the mine doesn’t get you, the coal dust will. Back in the day, at least the unions were strong and after many hard-fought, occasionally bloody battles with Devco (the crown corporation that used to run the coal mines), a coal miner could earn a decent living. Devco, on […]