Nova Scotia needs a new deal

…The key thing is that the full costs of imported food is not included. We don’t have to go down the protectionist route, it’s just that the cost of transportation and use of energy and greenhouse gas emissions are omitted from the actual price of the product. We have to be able to bring those true costs into the accounting system; we have to have an accounting system that includes social and environmental benefits and costs—without that, nothing’s going to change.
I want to come back to a second to the beginning of this. I’m not sure that what we want to look at is called “recovery.” I think we’re talking about a restructuring of the economic system and it won’t look the same—it can’t look the same. I’ve got a quote here from George Monbiot, who says, “Climate breakdown, peak oil and resource depletion will all dwarf the current financial crisis, in both financial and humanitarian terms.” So unless we start thinking long-term, this current economic meltdown is going to seem like very small potatoes.

The Coast