Hopefully, this post-legislative scrutiny will provide a chance to correct any excesses.
How has Conservation Fared Under This Government?
I’m going to give this government just 5 out of 10 on the conservation front.
Environment
Will our cities revive?
Our cities are the nation’s lungs; they recycle and accelerate external goods and transform them internally into faster circulation. Auckland and Christchurch have had tens of billions invested in them over successive local and central governments, but has this improved our strength or wealth as a country at all?
Labour’s Hefty Carrot-And-Stick For Water
New Zealand’s local and regional councils have been given until August 31 2020 to sign up to a ginormous fund that would help them improve their water, wastewater, and stormwater systems. The implications for them doing this are significant and could see the end of Council control of the supply of water.
Greenland ice sheet is disintegrating
For the last 30 years, earth scientists have been warning that Greenland was nearing a tipping point into complete disintegration. Now authors of a new study published in Nature has claimed that, even if the climate now reverted to the levels where it was stable a few decades ago, that would still happen. It is now clear that the IPCC worst case for Greenland is what is now being observed.
If National wins the hope for clean water and swimmable rivers will be gone by lunchtime
National has promised that if it gains power rules designed to improve water quality in our streams and rivers will be “gone by lunchtime.
Yale does socialist medicine with new covid test
Yale have developed a covid saliva test that is not only effective but will be intentionally cheap and easily available.
What Might A Democratic Party-Dominated U.S. Foreign Policy Do?
Inasmuch as tiny, distant New Zealand need worry about the foreign policy of the United States, it’s worth a drill into what a Democratic Party dominated United States foreign policy might look like.
Covid-19 vs 1918 influenza
Reading a number of articles in the NZ Herald in recent days calling for change in how we handle outbreaks of covid-19 in NZ. The implied precept is the damage covid-19 poses to the population of NZ over time is less than the immediate economic damage. That covid-19 is like the flu and results in herd immunity. However it is far worse than the influenza pandemic of 1918, much longer lasting and we probably won’t reach herd immunity naturally for generations.
The top seven things Covid has changed
Covid has fundamentally changed society for the better in surprising ways.
Covid recovery and bouncing forward
Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better. How then to ‘bounce forward’ from COVID-19 in such a way that we also move to a way of doing things consistent with the scale of the climate crisis?
The fragility of our food supply
As climate, ecological, pandemic and neoliberal pressures put our food security at risk, we can take heart from the many people who have been developing and practicing sustainable and resilient food growing.
National’s policy platform
For a party that promised to be a policy factory National’s policy offerings are severely deficient.
Falling into a coma
Why have we fallen into the most boring and predictable election we’ve had since Bolger’s second term?
The Greens are thinking ahead
The Greens have released a detailed policy document that sets out what they want to achieve if they are part of the next Government and their Labour Relations policies could be considered to be more pro union than Labour’s policies.
Folly of the year
What is the strangest recent proposal for development in New Zealand?
COVID-19: A human adapted virus
It has been obvious about COVID-19 that it is very well adapted to humans. It has evolved a good entry system to the humans, often has mild symptoms, long pre-symptomatic infectious period, and doesn’t kill many of its hosts. What has been less obvious is where it came from. It looks more like South East Asia rather than China.
Greens policy announcement: Our Clean Energy Plan
Our Clean Energy Plan is the first part of our transformational proposal to end the use of fossil fuels in Aotearoa. It will help to ensure our grandchildren inherit a world where they can not only survive, but thrive.
Everybody gets a road
National has made two major roading project announcements in the past week. Both announcements recycled announcements that were also made before the last election.
National’s dilemma – business as usual is failing them.
Audrey Young’s take in Granny Herald was interesting. “No ordinary Labour speech by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern”. That is because the political ‘business as usual’ approach by the business orientation of National campaigning using the politics of fear and envy doesn’t work well in times of crisis. Business simply has too short a viewpoint to be acceptable in government at present – or increasingly in our uncertain future.
Wellington buses now: how a local authority harmed public transport
Sure to form, Paul Swain along with Regional Council Chair and another former Labour MP Fran Wilde proposed tearing down the trolleybus wire and increasing the city’s carbon emission. This was to then promptly followed by re-tendering all the bus routes having redesigned all the bus network so that bus companies could then compete over routes and undercut each other. At one council meeting in mid-2016 Swain was questioned about the possibility of protecting drivers jobs and employment conditions. After a few questions, he lost patience, slammed in hand on the table and ended the meeting. This was the extent to which Swain and the Greater Wellington Regional Council considered supporting bus drivers during this process.
Green Party win: RMA amended to include climate change
“In my view, this is one of the most significant policy changes to address climate change that we have done this term” – James Shaw
The light rail delay is good
There is a solid silver lining to the delay in the Auckland light rail to the airport project.
We don’t have time for this shit
the government can’t agree is a euphemism for NZ First blocking climate action.
A World That Just Doesn’t Need As Much Oil
BP yesterday sent a really big message that effectively now, Covid-19 is the break that tips the world away from oil dependence.
Babylon’s Burning
Nothing changes
The wood, the trees and the ETS
It’s a brutal thing to propose more taxes and costs on business during our worst economic meltdown in a century. But yesterday the Government increased the cost of Carbon. But we need to do more.
Todd Muller is Simon Bridges with less personality
Todd Muller has announced a front bench that resembles a National Party front bench from 30 years ago. And his first live interview on national television did not go as well as he hoped.
No Right Turn on scrutiny of the COVID-19 Bill
What the Greens did
A round up of the Green Party’s achievements in the 2020 Budget: funding for nature, the commitment to ending violence, and public housing and insulation. And a look at the pragmatics of what the Greens can currently accomplish.
Transmission Gully PPP
I’d agree with what No Right Turn says..
“The entire project looks to be an expensive failure. Rather than transferring risk to the private sector, it turns out to be the usual scam of privatising profits and socialising losses.”
What would President Biden do?
With President Trump doing what we all expected, and killing 67,000 people and counting through chronic poor leadership, and utterly ruining the U.S. economy as well, it’s time to look at what policies the alternative candidate has on offer.
A Response to ‘No Exit’.
In a recent post, Bill hit his straps with – “Either way, wind power won’t save us. Solar power won’t save us. Carbon capture and storage won’t save us. Your God won’t save us. Nothing but ourselves will save us.”
I felt miffed and more than a little grumpy at Bill’s flippant reference to God, and so sent through this long form response. ~ Adam.
Covid-19 and climate change
The International Energy Agency is forecasting that disruptions caused by Covid-19 will reduce CO2 output this year by 8%. To avoid the worst excesses of climate change the world has a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 7.6% for the next decade. How are we going to keep repeating the reductions that we achieved this year for the next decade?
His work here is not yet done
Former Prime Minister John Key has said that under current conditions employers are going to sack 20 per cent of their workers even if the company is doing well and that employers should never waste a crisis.
No Exit.
Reaction to Covid 19 has done more in a few weeks to blunt the drive behind climate change than anything the environmental movement has managed to do in over thirty years.
How to kill the car
What would you do so that instead of wandering endlessly through tilt-slab monstrosities soaked in 80s music and fluorescent lighting, surrounded by oppressed minimum-wage slaves who hate being there and you hating being there worried about your wheeled asset damaged in their carpark instead you get freedom?