Gail Wylie: Its a perennial puzzle for the Canadian public- the blithely repeated but already refuted nuclear industry claims for ‘small modular reactors.’ The catchy industry words and phrases remain unaltered and misleading. And that’s the case with the Chronicle Herald’s May 3rd article lamenting the exclusion of nuclear power in Nova Scotia.
Mallory Smith looks at the privatization of NS Power in 1992, a pretty sweet deal for shareholders drawing dividends from a company that has a monopoly over electrical supply in the province.
At present, Nova Scotia Power’s’s sulphur dioxide emissions are capped at 72,000 tonnes a year. NSP revealed to the utility board that the province intends to amend its Air Quality Regulations to allow 90,000 tonnes of emissions for 2021 and 2022. That’s wrong! Energy expert Richard Starr provides the context.
Environmentalists have long argued that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not only an urgent and critical necessity for our planet’s survival, it’s also good for the economy. Now a new report by the Ecolgy Action Centre quantifies these benefits. It’s an excellent piece of work, and very necessary to help focus the discussion we need to have. However, the report does not go far enough in terms of environmental justice and tackling the dominance of car culture.
This afternoon some 40 environmentalists, including from Florida and Labrador, rallied at the new convention centre in Halifax to deliver a message of climate justice to Emera shareholders meeting inside.
A couple of ways you may get help if you have no money to pay your heating bill. It’s not enough, but it’s something.
We featured Brent and Donna, the Sheet Harbour couple on income assistance, in an earlier story about the terrible state of disrepair of their public housing unit. Community Services used to pay their entire power bill, but last week they contacted me because all of a sudden they are saddled with a $60 monthly share. They don’t know why, and they don’t know how they are going to deal with it.
Fisher and activist Darren Porter on the latest developments around the illegal fish kills by the Annapolis tidal generating station. A study by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat may offer Nova Scotia Power a way out of the mess of its own creation, he says.
Last week citizen-reporter and poverty activist Jodi Brown reported on the predicament of Samantha Monaghan, mother of six-year old son Luc, who has a terminal illness. Today things got really bad.
Nova Scotia is one of Canada’s most emissions-intensive provinces. Peggy Cameron wrote an open letter to Stephen McNeil pleading to change that. “You need to say “no” to highways and pipelines that increase our use of fossil fuels. Then you need to tackle this short list: increase renewables for Nova Scotian use, not export; shut down coal-fired generating plants; incentivize regenerative agricultural practices; stop clear-cutting and pesticide-spraying; promote afforestation and value-added production; establish a province wide integrated transportation network; and create a net-zero-carbon building programme.”