Despite ample evidence that we’re destroying our environment and, thus, our future, our elected leaders don’t care. They should. According to a poll conducted in April, Marketing & Research Intelligence Association found 88 percent of Atlantic Canadians feel fighting global warming should be top priority, the highest rate in Canada. If we care so much […]
Chris Benjamin
Posted inNews + Opinion
Chebucto Road’s dead end?
Basin Contracting has been given the green light to start the two-month process of widening Chebucto Road this week. “The official start date is today but I drove by and didn’t see any signs of work,” Dave McCusker, transportation manager for Halifax Regional Municipality, said Monday of the project. By day’s end there were signs […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Alex Wilson plans for the worst
“Hurricanes, floods, ice storms, fuelshortages, blackouts, terrorism.” Alex Wilson gives me a list of things modern architects needs to concern themselves with. Wilson is a green building editor and executive editor of Environmental Building News. Jennifer Corson and Keith Robertson of Solterre Design, a local green architectural firm, have invited me to meet with Wilson […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bulldozers stalled on Chebucto Road
The Chebucto Road widening project was unexpectedly sidetracked this week. In past months, regional council had been split on the issue, but at each step of the process the pro-widening side had enough votes to push through approval and funding of the project. All that was left was to give final approval of a $2,080,619 […]
Posted inArts + Music
Exposing the bottomfeeders
Taras Grescoe is leading a downward journey toward bottomfeeding. “Twelve to 14 years ago I became a fish-eater, a piscivore,” he says in a baritone voice, over the phone from Montreal. He is touring eastwards promoting his new book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, with a stop at Saint […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Faux democracy
Why do I get nervous whenever government talks about “engaging the public in a conversation about the future?” You hear that talk a lot in HRM. Do they ever get it right? If they did, communities wouldn’t need public demonstrations to be heard. When councillor Sheila Fougere proposed a one-year moratorium on the Chebucto Road […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Liking biking
Liking biking It’s a slow ride. If it was a race, I couldeasily win. Most of us could. But I’m middle of the pack, surrounded by 300 Haligonian cyclists who have taken over the streets. A chant goes up behind me, “One, two, three, four, we don’t want no oil wars.” It’s Critical Mass, the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Climate Crisis
If plans were prosperity, Nova Scotians would all be driving Benzes and smoking hundred-dollar bills. We’re adrift in a sea of plans, but if some of them don’t turn into action soon this seaside province may sink into the bay. The provincial government’s first annual report on its Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, made […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Consulting games
After four years of pushing city council for action on the Bloomfield Centre, the north end rec centre with a vibrant 20-year history, Imagine Bloomfield has a glimmer of hope. Since 2004, the non-profit collective of Bloomfield tenants and neighbours has gathered community input and held a series of public consultations facilitated by Dalhousie planning […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Poop scoop
Last column I wrote about HRM’s plan to sell our toxic crap to farmers, call it fertilizer and grow our food in it. The sludge from our harbour is a massive cocktail of mostly unidentified chemicals that pose deadly risks to farm animals and humans and huge financial risks to farmers. I’ve heard better ideas, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bio-not-so-solids
Last week, after years of pressure from environmental and health groups, Health Canada took a step toward banning bisphenol A, which has been poisoning us for decades in bottles and cans. That’s the latest example of 20/20 hindsight. Here’s the newest example of negative-20 foresight: sludge (excuse me, “biosolids”) from Halifax Harbour being dumped on […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax Harbour Non-solutions
Halifax’s new $300-million sewer system could be obsolete before opens. That’s because federal environment minister John Baird has promised “in short order” new rules about what we can dump into the harbour. Those rules present two major challenges for our almost-ready sewage plants. The first is that the planned “primary advanced” level of treatment for […]