Green Party: COVID-19 recovery and investment in people and nature
Most of the funding will go directly to employing people – the tools needed for wetland restoration such as spades and seedlings are far cheaper than big excavators and asphalt.
Environment
Draconian Tourism or no Tourism?
If overseas tourists want to visit NZ, they may have to give up a little bit of their privacy to keep all of us safe.
Russel Norman: Climate change is harder to visualise than coronavirus, but no less dangerous
Executive Director of Greenpeace NZ, Russel Norman writes about the different responses to climate change and covid-19, and the things we can learn from the pandemic.
Our damaged rivers and streams
A new report out from the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics NZ showing that New Zealand’s fresh water system is getting worse, all over the place, but particularly in the South Island.
Running for cover
More 1% Americans are heading our way, according to Bloomberg. The Texas company building underground bunkers is getting more enquiries. They’re not running from the virus but fear the aftermath when the breadlines turn.
Greens push for large intercity rail infrastructure to ensure sustainable post-COVID-19 rebuild
“The Greens are highlighting fast intercity rail improvements as the type of climate-friendly, job-creating project that should be prioritised for post-COVID-19 economic stimulus investment.”
Time to Pivot?
It would appear NZ and much of the rest of the world has made a first rather coincidental step on the AGW front.
No Right Turn: Climate Change – the need for a green recovery
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.
How Not to Engage in Public Debate
The best way to engage in public debate on the lockdown is to be open, clear, and transparent and show the facts. A press release full of beliefs and reckons is unhelpful and irresponsible.
What we were doing wasn’t working.
After the lockdown, it is tempting to try and go back to what we had before. To the familiar and comfortable, especially for us that were comfortable. Forgetting that for so many, things were anything but, comfortable. That won’t be happening. “Before” no longer exists.
Better footpaths and cycleways are a socialist inspired plot?
National MP Simon O’Connor thinks that making under used streets safer for walkers and cyclers is a Socialist inspired plan for world domination.
Greenpeace’s Green Covid Response
Oil giant OMV finally leave New Zealand, and Greenpeace releases its Green Covid Response plan to the government.
Has the EU failed during COVID-19?
Originally posted on Nick Kelly’s blog
For global governance organisations, this is an important moment. This is the chance for them to demonstrate their worth and coordinate the response. In many ways how these structures respond becomes more important than the response of nation-states. This also is where the deficiencies and shortcomings of such organisations become very apparent. The noise coming from the EU in the last 48 hours is far from reassuring.
Tourism is the elephant in the living room
Rather than saving an industry that has multiple sustainability and resiliency failures, how about we regenerate local economies and set them to serve our communities?
What about Climate Change then?
Shouldn’t this global shock from this COVID-19 virus make us all wake up to the power of collective global action on climate change?
What kind of system change do we want right now?
As mainstream systems are forced to adapt to the new state of affairs in a covid world, what are the bigger picture changes that need to happen so that we are future-proofing our communities at the same time?
Red tape bonfire of the vanities
National has promised a bonfire of regulations. Just like conservatives in Australia, the United Kingdom, America and previous National administrations.
Quick Question.
Your material life; would you trade it for the world?
Update/edit.
Interesting that the definitive answers all ran in one direction.
RIP Jeanette Fitzsimons
Former Greens co leader Jeanette Fitzsimons has died.
Climate change – the right schemes and the left despairs
The Australian Liberal Government has signalled a movement away from solar and wind power to untested technologies including carbon capture, hydrogen and lithium. Meanwhile the woman who led the negotiations for the Paris Agreement is calling for civil disobedience to force institutions to respond to the climate crisis.
Happy cows and land restoration
The point here isn’t to go ‘boo vegans’, it’s to point starkly to the problems with the current food and environment debate, and show case the pathways beyond the meat/no meat binary.
National’s new conservation policy was previously announced in 2014
National has announced a “new” policy that it previously announced in 2014. And that has already been implemented.
Someone should keep a Talley
Radio New Zealand has published details of Talley donations totalling $27,000 being made to the NZ First Foundation.
WTAF NZ First?
It has been reported that NZ First will oppose the Green’s attempt to make the country’s car fleet more sustainable and that it may hold up proposed gun law changes designed to address the problems clearly shown by the Christchurch massacre.
Sustainable NZ not so sustainable after all
It appears that National’s dream of an alternative Green party that would drive the real Green Party below the threshold is in tatters with news that Sustainable NZ is on the skids.
Pure clear water
It’s probably time to notice why Jones’ Provincial Growth Fund had to step in and provide several million of funding to patch up the water supply emergency in Northland.
Climate and food security: annual cropping vs regenerative agriculture
Science is showing that global food security is now at risk from climate change, farmers and gardeners are showing us how to adapt and mitigate at the same time.
The end of petrol driven cars
Boris Johnson’s UK Government has announced that by 2035 there will be no more petrol or diesel cars entering the UK fleet. Is it time for the New Zealand government to announce the same thing?
What if plant-based wasn’t the answer?
Instead of burning the world a bit more slowly, how about we don’t burn it at all?
Southland floods and toxic waste
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?
The Government’s $12 billion infrastructure package
The details of the Government’s $12 billion infrastructure announcement have been released.
Steve Mnuchin, not Greta Thunberg, needs to go back to school
US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has attacked Greta Thunberg for not understanding the economics of climate change. But he has then been roundly criticised by a number of people, including his wife.
Climate change thought experiment
What if…
The right is splintering on climate change
The right appears to be splintering on climate change, with former Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull describing Donald Trump as the world’s leading climate change denier. And locally National MP Andrew Bayley has talked the profound effects of climate change on Antarctica’s ecosystems at the same time as Paula Bennett is attacking educational material designed to make children think about climate change.
Power, the Acceleration of Cultural Evolution, and Our Best Hope for Survival
Originally published by Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg writes about humanity’s relationship with power and how this presents both great danger and great opportunity.
The great political heist that wasn’t
National has hinted darkly that the theft of laptops from its headquarters was possibly motivated by political considerations even though it had been told of a similar burglary of a neighbouring office had also occurred recently.