The Standard

Environment

Categories under Environment

The robots are coming to get us

Written By: - Date published: 11:14 am, September 11th, 2026 - 24 comments

AI techies are sound the alarm on where AI is going and how dangerous it will be. We can and should act now to prevent that.

Labour to accelerate climate action

Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, September 8th, 2026 - 17 comments

“Labour is fully committed to the Paris Agreement and will put New Zealand on course to meet its targets…. Walking away from it, as National and its mates are planning to do, would be giving up on our kids’ future and impose huge costs on our economy.”

The Right is winning the bullshit media narrative

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, September 8th, 2026 - 27 comments

Last weekend saw a continuation of right wing parties coming out with inane policy announcements that make a media splash without any hard questions being asked.

Greens launch plan to break up the supermarket duopoly and bring down the price of food

Written By: - Date published: 7:43 pm, September 6th, 2026 - 179 comments

“The Green Party has today announced a plan to break up the supermarket duopoly by creating a publicly owned supermarket chain called KiwiMart, as part of its Affordable Kai election policy”

New Zealand’s Gas Panic Was Entirely Lies

Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, September 4th, 2026 - 32 comments

Anyone remember it was just a year ago that businesses and government politicians were crying about the loss of natural gas availability?

Greenpeace: Why the 1.5°C overshoot report must be an urgent call to action on climate change

Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, September 3rd, 2026 - 1 comment

The UNEP’s new report ‘Limiting Overshoot’ outlines a pathway called “overshoot, peak and decline” to minimise and adapt to the impacts of an exceedance and an eventual return to 1.5°C.

The Government suddenly wants to limit the damage it has caused to our climate response

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, August 30th, 2026 - 24 comments

After spending all term undermining the Country’s climate change response the Government now wants to improve the country’s ability to meet the Country’s Paris Accord obligations.

Elon Musk would be pleased with Opportunity Party’s Data Centre policy

Written By: - Date published: 7:39 pm, August 22nd, 2026 - 69 comments

The Opportunities Party wishes to enrich Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison by giving them tax breaks to establish data centres in Aotearoa.

Vote Climate

Written By: - Date published: 7:50 pm, August 16th, 2026 - 9 comments

When voting this year vote Climate.

The mythological climate saviour

Written By: - Date published: 7:37 pm, August 10th, 2026 - 12 comments

Carbon capture and storage is bullshit, another lie from the fossil fuel industries so they can keep making money instead of reducing emissions

Fuck this shit

Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, July 13th, 2026 - 37 comments

It’s not enough to say fuck this shit, but it’s necessary to start with. We then have to tell a different story, one that people want, that inspires hope, and opens the door to something better than denial or doom.

Labour: Solar without the Upfront Cost

Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, July 9th, 2026 - 25 comments

This is a very impressive policy from Labour

This Government’s war on the homeless and the young

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, July 3rd, 2026 - 10 comments

In a land of milk and honey you would think that every kiwi would have plenty to eat and somewhere to live. But this week has shown the Government wants to refuse emergency to some poor people and feed young children inadequate school lunches.

The cut to Total Mobility doesn’t add up

Written By: - Date published: 8:37 pm, June 29th, 2026 - 8 comments

7 days after petitioning parliament seeking proper funding for Total Mobility, the government instead cut the funds.

With friends like NZ First …

Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, June 27th, 2026 - 6 comments

This week Tama Potaka announced the Government will backtrack on a proposal that would have allowed for the sale of up to 60% of the country’s conservation land. But Shane Jones then completely undermined the announcement by talking about using Conservation land for mining.

New Zealand pushes ahead with selling / exchanging 60% of its precious conservation estate

Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, June 18th, 2026 - 21 comments

New Zealand pushes ahead to privatise conservation land, opening up almost 5 million hectares for sale and/or exchange

Local Bodies: The myth of New Zealand’s economic backbone

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, June 14th, 2026 - 36 comments

If the farming sector is the ‘backbone of the economy’ then why is it that we are struggling to stand upright economically at the moment? Is it because agriculture is a economic drain on the rest of NZ. It provides 85% of our export revenue. But contributes just 5% of GDP, 5% of the workforce, and 1-3% of tax revenue – which effectively measures the profit to NZ.

National intends to proceed with the LNG terminal and welch on the country’s Kyoto Protocol obligations

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, June 12th, 2026 - 12 comments

National, a party of supposed economic geniuses, will spend billions on an LNG terminal that is not needed, billions on roads of National significance whose business cases are appalling, and attack Labour for a policy that is cheap, will help ordinary people, reduce fuel dependancy and greenhouse gas emissions.

The Fast Track Legislation Really is This Bad

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, June 8th, 2026 - 12 comments

There is growing local opposition to the prospect of open cast mining in the Central Otago approved by the Fast Track process.

More fishy than a bait shop

Written By: - Date published: 8:38 pm, May 27th, 2026 - 15 comments

Christopher Luxon has implied that a junior staffer met major polluters and received submissions urging him to sink Mike Smith’s bid to hold them to account which were then hidden. But it was his Chief Policy Advisor.

Doing their master’s bidding

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, May 25th, 2026 - 43 comments

Briefing papers from two of the corporates being sued by Mike Smith for damaging the environment urging the Government to change the law to stop the case were received but allegedly lost by Luxon’s office.

Stop This Madness

Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, May 14th, 2026 - 33 comments

Why is Chris Bishop wanting to review the cost of the City Rail Link while at the same time is happy to proceed with roads of national signficance that are very expensive but provide limited financial return?

Constitutional outrage

Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, May 12th, 2026 - 26 comments

The Government’s plans to retrospectively change the law to stop a case seeking damages for climate damage caused by heavy emitters is a constitutional outrage and shows not only contempt for the rule of law but also contempt for any action taken by a citizen against climate change.

Smash Left populism, get Right populism

Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, May 11th, 2026 - 76 comments

That’s Starmer’s achievement, as the local elections show. He always was a muppet puppet; his string-pullers are much more sinister.

“Interest rates, oil and gold”

Written By: - Date published: 4:23 pm, May 7th, 2026 - 11 comments

That RNZ tricolon has always been infuriating fluff. In the real world, analysts warn we are heading for a cliff.

Uncertain Futures and Political Change

Written By: - Date published: 5:54 pm, April 21st, 2026 - 65 comments

The world is turned upside down and challenges progressive politics to change gear.

Luxon is toast

Written By: - Date published: 1:26 pm, April 21st, 2026 - 36 comments

Any time a political leader has to put their position to a vote, they become a dead pigeon. David Lange knew winning the vote didn’t end the matter.

Greens’ State Of The Planet Calls For National Electrification Plan

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, April 21st, 2026 - 28 comments

“The plan would electrify homes, transport and industry, ending New Zealand’s dependence on unpredictable global fossil fuel markets, cutting household power bills, and building real energy security at home.”

Without pluralism within the climate movement, we risk handing the future to the far right

Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, April 20th, 2026 - 22 comments

“As climate politics enters a critical phase, exclusion is a luxury we cannot afford. We need all hands on deck.”

What We Can Do

Written By: - Date published: 6:50 pm, March 20th, 2026 - 30 comments

In absence of a concrete leadership plan from this government to address the impending oil supply crisis, this post is for us to simply note down what actions we are taking ourselves. 

The oil crisis: “We live in challenging times”

Written By: - Date published: 4:33 pm, March 19th, 2026 - 46 comments

The government has shifted position and is now directly talking about the need to plan and prepare for a potential crisis and doing so for the worst case scenario.