Media Clipping — Sunday, September 2, 2001, The Halifax Herald

Are we up to the challenge?

By Donald S. Dunbar

Letter to the Editor

RONALD COLMAN'S article "Weather or not we like it!" (The Sunday Herald, Aug. 26) makes a strong case for the economic benefits of a smart energy conservation policy. It should be required reading for George W. Bush - and in particular Dick Cheney, whose dismissal of conservation as a "personal virtue," rather than the basis of an energy policy, can now be shown to be not merely patronizing, but bad economics. It might also be corrective reading for those Canadians who continue to see conservation as a form of soft-headed idealism.

I would carry Dr. Colman's argument one step further, and stress what economists call the "external cost" of economic activities that impose hidden costs on all taxpayers. The cost to society of a business activity that is not reflected in the price of that business activity's product or service is an external cost. Sometimes the taxpayer pays these costs up front in the form of government subsidies to inefficient economic activities; more often, the bill comes due much later in the form of costly environmental damage remediation or premature resource depletion.

Copyright © 2001, The Halifax Herald