Stephen Joyce has had published an opinion piece in this morning’s Herald which extolls the virtue of free trade and ignores the pitfalls. Such as those shown this week when TransCanada sued the US Government for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline contract.
COP21 provided welcome commitment by the world’s nations to do something meaningful about climate change. But this is not enough. So what next?
This post is essentially a distillation of two presentations given by Kevin Anderson at the Earth 101 gathering in Iceland earlier this year. You can view them here and here I highly recommend that you do as they are packed with high quality, no nonsense information. For those who don’t know, Kevin Anderson was the director of the Tyndall Centre, the UK’s leading academic climate change research organization and is a professor of energy and climate change in the School of Mechanical, Aeronautical and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester.
That National Ltd™ is currently in the process of giving away New Zealand’s sovereignty in areas such as energy resources and related regulations, explains its contempt for the environment and the talking down of expectations regarding climate change.
McClay said he could not answer the specific question because he had “been advised” no such data exists.
How convenient.
The way to keep people occupied during this period of “Pretend and Extend” is to keep a steady stream of establishment fairytales (and horror stories) flowing.
The proposed TPP is a protection racket – not a trade deal.
July was hot hot hot. Meanwhile, let’s keep focussing on economic growth and more exports (and not making the middle classes too nervous that life is going to change radically, one way or another).
Time worn patterns and predictable decisions.
In Copenhagen, our government committed itself, and by extension, us “To hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius and to take actions to meet this objective, consistent with the science and on the basis of equity”
And yet…
There has been some discussion about the reasons why Solid Energy is facing liquidation. A brief review of its history suggests that this Government’s incompetence is a major factor.
Replacing electric trains with diesel is the kind of short-term stupid decision making that is unfortunately typical of the way NZ is currently run.
A respectful open letter to Andrew Little with suggestions for how to win the next election!
113 more jobs to go at Solid Energy’s Stockton Mine. Bill English killed Solid Energy, these job losses are his.
More economic genius from the Nats.
Simon Bridges announced yesterday the release of the 2015 block offer. Potentially oil companies could be drilling in deep sea pristine environmental areas off the West Coast where the endangered Maui’s Dolphin lives. He calls for a “mixed balance” of energy generation. But all this means is that he wants the good mixed with the bad.
Fracking has created a short term oil glut. That’s bad news for climate change. Could we at least find a silver lining in this carbon cloud, or will it be business as usual?
The government has failed to tackle NZ’s on-going housing crisis. Fuel/energy poverty is increasing, with a higher proportion of households unable to afford any heating. More Kiwis are renting than in the 2006 census, & more Aucklanders live in over-crowded households.
The price of crude oil has nearly halved in the past six months and is causing massive repercussions throughout the world with both the Russian economy and the American Shale Oil industry under threat. The geopolitical implications are complex.
Chief executive remuneration packages in the privatised power companies have surged post float.
Illegal drilling in our “Exclusive Economic Zone” gets let off with a “warning”.
In the spirit of new badly needed Left Unity. The Left opposition needs to start setting the agenda. First “feed the kids” needs to be picked up. Second the corporate welfare for Solid Energy needs a lot of scrutiny. So does the the state funding of oil exploration.
When they write about it at all, the media tends to produce a lot of smash on the issue of global warming, and I’ve had enough of the crap. I apologise for both the length of this post and the number of data chewing links (pdfs and video). I’m hoping to write a number of posts looking at global warming from a variety of perspectives, and hopefully, it’ll be possible to keep others somewhat briefer than this one.
On Al Jazeera NewsHour this morning, there were two reports on environmental issues in different parts of the planet: stories of the tension between pursuit of economic “growth” and the destruction of the environment. In both countries, there are attempts to develop renewables, without changing the whole system.
When looking at Simon Bridges – a purported government minister. You have to remember that he is damn sloppy even for a politician. But oh so typical of his usual muppet behaviour is that he wasn’t aware that he was opening up our biggest forest park for oil and gas exploration. Of course it could just be National’s bulldoze anything for a little immediate profit….
Gamble Big’ rather than ‘Think Big’ should be this National Government’s mantra.Opening up huge areas of our land and territorial waters for open slather oil and gas exploration is a gamble on so many levels. When many countries like Denmark are actively chasing a sustainable, clean energy future, this government is throwing all its hopes on a big strike of fossil fuel.
Two days after the IPCC has warned us of the threat posed by climate change and Simon Bridges has announced a huge block offer of parts of New Zealand and much of its territorial water. This will include the pristine waters off Auckland’s west coast, home of Maui’s dolphin. In a world that has to address its consumption of petroleum you have to question if it is worth the risk.
One of the more irritating traits of National politicians is their bone-headed and short-term obsession about being rentiers selling raw and lightly processed […]
NZ seems like a client state of both US imperialism, and the UK monarchy: a throwback to the first part of the 20th century. John Key was quick to support the US & EU lines on the Crimea; some low achieving, British royals are visiting NZ at taxpayers’ expense.
Local Bodies looks at some (very cool) solar installations and the Greens solar policy. We are now seeing a stark contrast between a Government desperate to support the status quo of increasing charges and large company profits, while the future focussed Greens are truly progressive in their thinking.
Economist Dr Geoff Bertram will analyse prospects for the single-buyer model for electricity on Tuesday 11 February in Wellington. Bertram has come under personal attack from the Electricity Authority for his analysis of price rises for power consumers. Fairfax analyst Chalkie calls the Authority’s report a “clever fallacious and deceptive.. politically led effort to discredit the Labour/Green single buyer policy.” Extraordinary. All welcome – register with the Fabians.
This post isn’t a ‘contrast and compare’ piece on the policy announcements of National, the Greens and Labour. Enough to say that National are pursuing privatisation while both Labour and Green are at least trying to do good things.
Shame about the reality of the bigger picture then.
Deep sea oil drilling is in the news. Labour’s position is to require increased environmental standards and drillers would have to display an effective ability to clean up any disasters. The Greens would prefer to leave the oil in the ground. If there is a change of Government this year resolving this issue will pose a fascinating test of the parties.
The Southland Times devoted the whole of the front page to celebrate Shell’s decision to do some exploratory drilling in the Great South Basin. The best scenario will be that they discover a sizable gas field similar to the one in Taranaki. Then royalties we will get are only 5% of the value of what is sold, almost 40% less than the OECD average AND we will have to pay full commercial rates to have any of it ourselves. The worst case scenario…. Well that is really bad and has no effective cover
No Right Turn looks at some of the past history of the company that this government trusts to deepsea drill at 1500 metres off the coast of Raglan.
They are cowboys who have a history of deliberately avoiding cleaning up their messes.
The Greenpeace Yacht Vega has set up camp in the area that Andarko wants to drill for deep sea oil. The recent law changes designed by Simon Bridges was meant to cover all possible loopholes. But has he left one open?
