On Thursday, our new dictator Gerry Brownlee decreed by Order in Council that the following Acts of Parliament were amended: the Building Act, the Local Government Act, the Resource Management Act, various pieces of transport legislation, and the Civil Defence Act. Most of the changes deal with minutiae of government. Some are less innocuous.
To have power and independence, any country needs a solid economic base. That’s even more true of superpowers/empires. To secure their economic sovereignty they need the raw materials and markets of less powerful countries. They reinforce their economic sovereignty by taking others’. China does it by buying up whole supply chains.
The Napier Earthquake led to the earthquake-resistant building standards that have proven so valuable in Christchurch. The EQC was founded after the Wairarapa Earthquake. World War 2 and the threat of air raids led to the creation of Civil Defence. What lessons can we learn from the Christchurch Earthquake? Better standards building on around liquefaction-prone ground seems like a priority.
The unilateral opening up of our ancestral lands and seas to drilling and mining by this Government is the most significant threat to the survival of our peoples and our way of life we have experienced in this generation. The big question in light of this the struggle is where are the Maori Party?
New Zealand is one of the oddest places geologically (Japan is similar) in the world because of our position between two plates and because we are at the twist where the plates change how they interact with each other. But the position of the Christchurch earthquake is a long way from the plate boundaries. Highly Allochthonous has a look at the mechanism of the quake.
The Christchurch earthquake was a shallow high magnitude earthquake close to a urban population centre. That is the disaster scenario for planners. It is a disaster, but not a major disaster. The enforcement of building regulations ensured that the city took damage, but survived largely intact.
Due to the discrepancies in the spread of knowledge the free-market is irrational but there is no doubt that we, collectively, have the needed information to make more rational decisions. The problem that occurs is that neither the knowledge nor the tools to help make rational decisions on that information are readily available. Is there a tech solution?
According to Maurice Williamson, we’re all racist. Our concern with foreign investment has nothing to do with the economy, we just hate the Chinese.
Bryan Walker at Hot Topic looks at the large scale renewable energy projects that are being developed in various countries around the world. The contrast with the dated approach to energy from Gerry Brownlee is quite striking. That has been described as “The Government’s energy strategy prioritises drilling and mining for more oil and coal, while providing virtually no stimulation for the development of renewable energy and clean technology. It … makes no attempt to set measurable emissions reduction targets.”
Believing that a law suit will make climate change disappear is up there with believing the king can turn back the tides (which poor, maligned Canute was trying to disprove, btw). Nonetheless, the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which appears to know little about the climate and less about science, is giving it a go. Nick S takes a more detailed look at the issue.
What do you do when you find science inconvenient to your ideology? Why, you strike it down! Burn the heretics! Or in the modern equivalent, you set the lawyers on them, and try and have the facts declared illegal.
In Morning Report yesterday there was a clear question and statement on the difference between weather events and climate. This is a question that always seems to confuse our CCD’s (climate change deniers and skeptics). So it is worth examining it a bit in the view of some of the unusual weather that has been happening recently. A increased frequency of such events is going to be the main effect of climate change over time, leading eventually to famines.
Climate change, peak oil, resource exhaustion, and over-population are combing to cause a new food crisis. Grains supply half the calories we consume directly and feed much of our live-stock. The prices of those are skyrocketing because supply can’t match demand. Starting with Russia, major exporters are limiting the amount they send abroad to keep what they have for their own people.
So disappointing to see that the Auckland Regional Council didn’t even bother to respond to an offer by the designer of a personal rapid transport system to use his design to solve the woeful public transport from Auckland airport to the city. This kind of small mindedness is endemic throughout government, especially with the Nats in charge.
For the last several decades the over-riding mantra across western governments has been that what is important above all else is economic growth. Now is the time to question whether it should still be our main aim and guiding light.
“Global climate talks appear to have slipped backward after five days of negotiations in Bonn, the chief U.S. delegate said Friday, adding that some countries were reneging on promises they made last year to cut greenhouse gas emissions”.
Extract from an article by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. “I’m a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.”
So National are to kick lowering the legal blood-alcohol level into the long grass by having 2 years of “research”. This whilst telling […]
Kiwis are amongst the highest consumers of bananas per capita in the world but for decades the banana industry has had a record […]
It’s taken me a few days to post on this opinon piece from Pattrick Smellie but it’s still worth reading! There are signs that Nick Smith is trying hard to improve the Nats environmental credentials, Gerry Brownlee notwithstanding. But Pattrick Smellie suggests it is not that simple:
The warning indicators of an impending ecological collapse keep piling up. Forests get most of the headlines, but in many ways the oceans are the lungs of the planet. And they’ve been smoking 30 a day for too long.
Another gem from Tom Scott.
The country is short about 10,000 houses and many of the houses we do have (mostly privately owned rentals) are unhealthy. The housing shortage was a driver of the last housing boom and is still keeping house prices excessively high, while poor quality housing means higher health costs, more sick days, and kids that are sick so often it disrupts their education. It would be sensible on every level to build the extra houses we need, and the government should take the lead role.
Well done Kiwis! A rousing show of solidarity and strength has forced the Nats to back down from their plans to mine Schedule 4 land. We have preserved some of the most precious places in our country for future generations. This is a straight craven backdown driven by Key’s relentless need to remain Mr Popular. But whatever the reason – its the right result!
The textbooks tell us that free trade is good because it means a more efficient use of resources. But the reality is that often the ‘competitive advantage’ one country has in producing a product compared to others isn’t some natural resource or better legal or physical infrastructure that makes business more efficient. Too often, the cheapest countries are the cheapest because they pay their workers the least and don’t protect their environment.
Predictions abound that the Government are today to announce a backdown on plans to mine Schedule 4 land..
The ETS-waste regulations currently being consulted on by the Government include a loophole that will actually increase greenhouse gas production in order to save polluters money. Who wrote the regs for the Government? A company that will be able to help landfills exploit this loophole by paying less whilst polluting more.
Today we should find out the fate of Schedule 4 – the precious Department of Conservation land that Key put up for mining. RNZ reports that the Cabinet are looking at the proposal today…
At Hot Topic, Gareth has a post on Christopher Monckton attempting to stifle the well-justified criticism of himself . For some reason he seems to think that it is ok for him to criticize working scientists despite having little knowledge of the subjects. However he seems to think they should not be able to analyze or criticize his level of stupid ineptitude.
Are swimsuit specials a thoughtful, clever way of arousing interest in climate change? Or are they little more than sexist idiocy? Are you curious enough to find out? Read this from the Guardian…
Just spotted in the NZ Herald that receivers for the Crafar dairy farm empire have announced that state-owned farmer Landcorp has been unsuccessful in its attempt to buy the properties…
New Zealand hero Pete Bethune isn’t one for mincing his words – now that he’s free to speak them. He’s described the New […]
An experimental solar-powered plane completed its first 24-hour test flight successfully Thursday, proof of concept that an aircraft can collect enough energy from the sun during the day to fly all night. The eventual goal is to fly it round the world…
This guy writes what I would aspire to write if I had the time and the cojones. For a lazy Saturday morning rant, read on.
Pete Bethune has had his sentence for bogus charges laid by Japanese whaling interests suspended. My warm congratulations to Pete and his family. […]
Auckland Transport Blog saying the bleeding obvious about the aggrandizement project that appears to be Steven Joyce’s grand vision for the future of transport in Auckland. If he was concentrating on reducing the road toll on this stretch of road, there are simpler and cheaper ways than wasting taxpayers money.
