Earth hour 2011
Where does a year go? Tomorrow is Earth Hour 2011. Will you go beyond the hour?
Environment
Germany abandons nuclear power
The world will gradually be forced to abandon fossil fuels. Fukushima (and Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island) show us that we can’t trust nuclear power. It has to be green, renewable energy sources. Can’t be done? Germany thinks it can.
English vs. Key on rebuilding costs
The PM and the Minister of Finance are at odds on how the cost of rebuilding Christchurch will be met. Bill English thinks that the costs are too high to be met by cuts, and significant borrowing will be required. John Key wants to avoid borrowing and cover the costs with budget cuts. This disagreement is indicative of the Nats shambolic preparation for the road ahead.
Informed consent
Owners of businesses in the red zone CBD want brief access to their premises to retrieve items and data that are vital to whatever remaining chance they have of keeping their enterprises alive. The government is refusing access on the grounds of safety. There’s right on both sides of the issue, but whatever happened to informed consent?
Future Auckland Transport
This post was going to be about Auckland Unleashed which is being released today, but has been somewhat, er, derailed, by the bridge vs tunnel report that’s come out.
Credit where it’s due
On Friday, the government sent out a Request for Proposal for building companies to build 2,500 temporary modular homes in Christchurch. It looks like step towards the rebuilding plan I and others have been suggesting for the past couple of weeks. Now, lets see an aggressive timetable and a plan for what comes next.
Vanishing rebuilding rhetoric
We’ve had the memorial service. Now we need action. Now we need the plan. Christchurch needs rebuilding. How is it going to happen? Does the current government have the will? I went looking for clues in John Key’s three big speeches to date. What I found was not encouraging…
Hartevelt swipes Nats’ elitism
The SST’s John Hartevelt is shocked by National’s decision to pay out millions for Christchurch rugby business while ordinary people live in shattered homes and lose their jobs with meager support. He asks whether the Nats have lost their moral-political bearings. In fact, this is a perfect example of National’s elitist philosophy.
20 March
Here’s my prediction for 20 March 2011.
Who will do the rebuilding?
Who will plan, oversee and administer the rebuilding of Christchurch? Public servants. The kind of “back room bureaucrats” that the Nats love to hate. But governments can’t get anything done without them.
Who’s bulldozing Christchurch business?
There’s a large number of reports coming out of Christchurch of businesses that have been demolished without Civil Defence consulting with the owners, as is procedure, and giving them a chance to recover vital equipment and records first. Disturbingly, some of these demolitions seem to have been carried out by ‘cowboys’ without CD approval.
Christchurch memorial service
A memorial service will be held in Hagley Park today to pay tribute to victims of the February quake. Proceedings begin at 10:30am, with the service starting at 12:30, and two minutes silence at 12.51pm. This event has strongly polarised opinions in Christchurch…
Killer Cars?
While media speculates on how many deaths in Japan will eventually be attributable to the earthquake, the tsunami and radiation exposure, I’ll warrant that one major contributory factor to the total death toll will escape any mention or comment.
Fukushima crisis deepens
In American football, there’s a move called the ‘Hail Mary pass’ – throw the ball down field and pray. That’s what filling the Fukushima reactors with sea-water has been described as, a Hail Mary pass. It just doesn’t seem to be coming off. Reactor 3 has started emitting more radiation, 4 is on fire, the core may be breached in 2. Even 5 and 6 pose a risk.
The building blocks of new Christchurch?
Me & others: How come the government seems to have no plan for rebuilding Christchurch or desire to get one?
Righties: Well, um, Key’s awesome and, anyway, what’s your plan, smart-arse ?
Me: I’m not the government, rebuilding Christchurch isn’t my job. But here’s where I would start.
The Wrong Stuff
This week’s Sunday Star-Times was full of stories about unaffordable food, housing and fuel affecting the country’s urban dwellers, nowhere more so than in Auckland. Meanwhile the shortage of housing after the earthquake promises huge rent and house price hikes for Christchurch, assuming the locals don’t flee and push up house prices elsewhere.
Continuing nuke crisis in Japan
Every day brings a new disaster from the Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant. Four reactors have now experienced an explosion and/or fire and/or partial meltdown. Yesterday saw the first significant radiation release, from Reactor 4. It’s a complex situation, so I’ve tried to summarise it as it stands this morning.
Christchurch RWC
I don’t think that anyone who has been paying attention to events in Christchurch could seriously have expected the city to host a major sporting event like the RWC within a few short months. So why is John Key the last person left in the country who is denying the obvious?
Weeping for Christchurch
Sometimes we take comments here and put them up as posts. Here’s one from long time contributor vto.
“Boosting science and innovation”
No Right Turn says all that is required on another of Nationals aspirational failures.
For the past year, the government has been talking a lot about “boosting science and innovation” as the “keys to economic growth”. Today, we saw the reality behind that talk, with news that NIWA is planning to sack 5% of its total workforce:
Go well
Forty two Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) workers left New Zealand this morning for Japan. Straight off the back of three hard weeks in the rubble of Christchurch, they are flying in to help out with an even bigger disaster.
Earthquake news round-up
The destruction wrought by the 9.0 Sendai Earthquake and Tsunami is truly appalling. Untold lives have been lost. Thousands of square kilometres were obliterated by the water which swept up to 20km inland.Updates second explosion at nuke plant. New tsunami warning. 70% chance of 7+ aftershock within days.
Nuclear Free
As the nuclear disaster continues to unfold in Japan there is a risk of a Chernobyl style event and a huge release of radiation. Coming as it does on the heels of the Christchurch earthquake, it is all too easy to imagine the same scenario playing out here. New Zealand must remain nuclear free forever. We need a plan for a nuclear free and oil constrained future, and we need it now.
Blazing Fruit
Apropos of nothing in particular, one of my favourite poems.
Meltdown
The Sendai Earthquake cut the power supply to the pumps at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. With no cooling water being pumped through the reactors, the nuclear fuel rods heated themselves until reactor 1 melted. But it should have been OK. The containment building should have kept the radiation from escaping. Then an explosion blew the containment building apart.
Back to School on Quakes
A comment from a foreign national in Japan caught my attention last night. She was a language teacher in a school and remarked that she was in the safest possible building as schools in Japan have extra earthquake reinforcement, ie over and above the building code as it applies to other buildings.
Auckland: a sprawling car future?
National will reject Auckland Council and Aucklanders’ view on what their future city should look like. Instead they propose One ever more sprawling city, with ever more sprawling motorways, ever more cars clogging its veins, ever less community, and ever less government money.
Disaster in Japan
A 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake has struck just off the coast of northeastern Japan. At a depth of just 24km and only 60km offshore, it released 8,000 times more energy than the second Christchurch earthquake. The Kurihara seismic station recorded a 7 on the destructiveness scale, the maximum reading. Swathes of 70K city of Kesennuma ablaze. Death toll unknown. $100 billion to $1 trillion damage. 20+ aftershocks over 5.5 are reported so far. Tsunami warnings across the Pacific.
Building our future
Facing a housing shortage in Auckland now and a massive rebuilding programme in Christchurch to come, the Government has announced the biggest public building initiative since World War 2. Thousands of unemployed young people will be paid to train as apprentices in building trades and contribute to their country’s future.
Beyond a joke
John Key and Gerry Brownlee are the two most powerful men in the country right now. In their actions and in their words they hold the hopes of tens of thousands of people whose lives have been turned upside down and the future of a major city. We really need these men to do a good job. So, this Laurel and Hardy impersonation has to stop.
Blame it on the quake
Last week, John Key said that, due to the earthquakes, “from June to June, my guess is that we’ve lost $12 billion in GDP”. Later, he said it was $15b over 4 years due to the quakes. Now, Treasury says most of that $15b is from the recession Key and English had led us into before the quakes. The Nats are trying to use the quakes to hide their failings.
Cometh the Hour
ChrisH submitted this incredibly knowledgeable and well-researched post on the rebuilding of Christchurch a few days ago. The announcement that large parts now lower-lying eastern suburbs will be abandoned lends more strength to his call for a visionary urban plan for the new, more resilient Christchurch. And Phil Goff has the history to present it.
For God’s sake, be straight with us
John Key and Gerry Brownlee made extremely foolish comments attacking the coronal staff trying to identify the dead and about knocking down all the historic buildings. Now, they’re lying about those statements. This crisis is too big for this childish bullshit. John, you need to be a real leader, not a naughty schoolboy lying to cover your mistakes.
Farrar fluffs food figures
I thought that with a devastating earthquake, a record oil/food price spike, an unemployment tsunami, and a double-dip recession that the Nats’ apologists might have realised it was time for honest discussion of the issues and solutions. Instead, they’re still trying to bury our heads in the sand.
I See Red
The government has a fair bit on its plate right now, like the Christchurch quake, and the hammering that ordinary folk are getting from the cost of living. So its reassuring to know that the PM’s office has its eye on the ball. It’s all over the “important issues”…
Bulldozer Brownlee
Gerry Brownlee thinks that most of Christchurch’s heritage buildings should be bowled tomorrow. I wonder what Christchurch thinks of Gerry Brownlee.