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Let’s help Tonga

Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, January 19th, 2022 - 12 comments

In 2010 the poor but proud Island Nation raised $705,000 to donate to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal Fund.  If New Zealanders were to reciprocate their generosity we would donate over $30 million.  It is time for us to return the favour.

None of this is remotely sustainable

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, November 3rd, 2021 - 43 comments

The story of New Zealand’s most polluted lake is the same story running through all of New Zealand society. We treat nature as an after thought that we can fix when things go wrong, even when we can’t. What if we told a different story?

Priorities?

Written By: - Date published: 7:54 pm, October 3rd, 2021 - 16 comments

Is setting priorities just a matter of resources?

Hospo resilience: pairing covid response and climate action

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, September 8th, 2021 - 13 comments

We’re now in the time of synchronous and overlapping crises. With Delta Level Two and ongoing restrictions affecting the hospitality sector, and eighteen months into our covid response, solutions need to be for the long haul. One of the keys to that is positive adaptation.

Ways out of the climate catastrophe

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, August 10th, 2021 - 130 comments

As the IPCC drops its grim, damning report on humans and climate change, and as we are surrounded by social and mainstream media narratives of disaster, we desperately need cogent and hopeful visions of where we can go next, and stories of futures where things work out.

Keep the faith, deep greenies

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, July 22nd, 2021 - 75 comments

For those that understand the cyclical, interconnected nature of reality and why growth is inherently limited in the physical world, kia kaha, we’re making headway.

If a thousand baby flamingos die in the desert does anyone hear them howl?

Written By: - Date published: 3:06 pm, July 16th, 2021 - 43 comments

Farmers aren’t the problem here, they’re the mirror New Zealand is holding up to itself. We say we want change, despite the evidence.

No Right Turn: Climate Change: Legal action

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, July 6th, 2021 - 2 comments

Lawyers for Climate Action are taking the Climate Change Commission to court over their lax budgets and dodgy accounting.

All the right words on climate have already been said

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, July 4th, 2021 - 19 comments

So I was just driving around thinking, “Ugh it’s hot. Ugh there’s a new fire starting near me at least every other day. Ugh, how is this my life, also this is just the beginning, I feel like I should be waking up from this nightmare at some point and yet I am not,” when the editor finally reached me.

NZ Nuclear-Free Day

Written By: - Date published: 9:32 pm, June 8th, 2021 - 3 comments

June 8 is the anniversary of Aotearoa’s 1987 nuclear-free legislation. NZOnScreen is running a retrospective of our proud history, the Nuclear-free Collection. It is well worth a watch. I particularly liked the movie “Nuclear Reaction,” with Big Norm seeing off the French, Big Dave seeing off the Americans, and Kiwi Keith also clear about where we stood. The nuclear risk is worse now than it has ever been.

 

Climate change. It’s still happening.

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, April 27th, 2021 - 35 comments

This is tough information to take in. I feel better when I try to take action to support the Climate Justice Movement which has known for decades that capitalism must be transformed and replaced for decent survival. Individual-collective action is possible. Keep going. – @climateben

No Right Turn: Climate Change: Heading for uninhabitability

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, March 13th, 2021 - 8 comments

it looks like just 1.5 degrees will be enough to cook most of the tropics:

No Right Turn: Give the Rangitata back

Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, February 28th, 2021 - 28 comments

If we want to protect our environment and ourselves, we need to scale this back. And the easiest way to do that is give the river back: remove or massively scale back those consents, and let the rivers flow.

Layers of Culpability

Written By: - Date published: 11:40 am, February 2nd, 2021 - 20 comments

The huge tyre fire near Amberley in North Canterbury last Friday is in an area with a high water table, extreme fire risk in summer, two kilometres from a town of 2000 residents, and on the edge of one of NZ’s premier wine regions.

Frogs swimming in the heated pot

Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, January 23rd, 2021 - 34 comments

The distracting political stupidities in places like the US and now in Russia tend to be entertaining for us southerners. But changes in climate are getting faster and more extreme. The continued instability in the northern polar vortex and the extreme weather it causes cut into our global food creating systems. The foundation of our population and societies. Froggies, the heat is still rising.

Resiliency politics

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, November 19th, 2020 - 14 comments

With news of more global stressors next year, the stories we tell right now are critical to how we build resiliency. Let’s make sure they are good ones.

No Right Turn: Climate Change – The problem of air travel

Written By: - Date published: 6:02 am, November 19th, 2020 - 147 comments

Until the pandemic, air travel was one of the fastest growing causes of greenhouse gas emissions. And its obscenely unequal, with just 1% of the world’s population causing 50% of the problem:

No Right Turn on scrutiny of the COVID-19 Bill

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, May 21st, 2020 - 8 comments

Hopefully, this post-legislative scrutiny will provide a chance to correct any excesses.

No Right Turn: Climate Change – the need for a green recovery

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, April 15th, 2020 - 7 comments

The Climate Change Commission – the expert panel tasked with getting New Zealand carbon neutral – has written to the government asking it to apply a “climate change lens” to the post-Covid-19 spend-up.

Red tape bonfire of the vanities

Written By: - Date published: 2:19 pm, March 9th, 2020 - 19 comments

National has promised a bonfire of regulations. Just like conservatives in Australia, the United Kingdom, America and previous National administrations.

Southland floods and toxic waste

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, February 6th, 2020 - 45 comments

As Southland starts post-flood recovery, the question arises of why 10,000 tonnes of waste known to become toxic on exposure to water was allowed to be stored on the banks of a river with known flood risk in a building with known flood risk? 

News Corp climate change denial attacked by (checks notes) James Murdoch …

Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, January 15th, 2020 - 116 comments

News Corp has had a bad week in the media with many questioning its continued climate change denial and its support for politicians refusing to accept the reality of climate change.  But the most surprising opposition has been expressed by Rupert Murdoch’s son and News Corp director James Murdoch.

He wasn’t here to help us, was he

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, January 4th, 2020 - 80 comments

The utter failure of the Australian Prime Minister to lead during the bushfire crisis reminds us that it’s care for our children and communities that drives climate action. When people mobilise politicians will follow.

Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN Climate Action Summit: “This is all wrong”

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, September 25th, 2019 - 7 comments

“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions?”

National are lighting political dumpster fires while the Amazon burns

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, August 27th, 2019 - 47 comments

New Zealand’s poster boys for late stage capitalism’s dying throes are fools of the highest order.

100 Days of climate vigil

Written By: - Date published: 11:54 am, August 23rd, 2019 - 4 comments

Ollie Langridge doing the climate action mahi at parliament.

Kill us now, or choose life.

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, August 23rd, 2019 - 27 comments

The Amazon burns. The Arctic is on fire. We won’t be able to eat or breath our electric cars, but we still have time to choose a different path.

What if there were only 34 31 more whitebait harvests left?

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, August 20th, 2019 - 66 comments

If we want to prevent the extinction of whitebait it’s time to stop buying and selling it.

There is no climate emergency according to National

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, July 19th, 2019 - 194 comments

Simon Wilson has suggested in the the Herald this morning that for purely political reasons National will frustrate and stymie action on climate change

Matata

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, July 18th, 2019 - 44 comments

Many a bold claim has been made for the necessity of responding to climate change, but when it comes to storms affecting one’s own home, Matata is surely the test case of this century.

Three disturbingly different views on climate change

Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, June 10th, 2019 - 63 comments

In the same week that Donald Trump said that the American climate was the cleanest climate, Ian Dunlop, former chairman of the Australian Coal Association, has warned of massive social consequences ranging from increased religious fervour to outright chaos. And UK Chancellor Philip Hammond is questioning if remedial action is affordable.