Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, December 15th, 2010 - 29 comments
3 under the radar stories yesterday. All linked by ideology. Kiwirail to buy 300 wagons from China because its cheaper than building them here. Not allowed to consider wider economic gains. Collins outsources her new prison to a multi-national with a history of prisoner abuse. English wants more ‘value’ from public assets. Value for whom? The likes of Serco?
Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, December 15th, 2010 - 37 comments
As a government and as a country we honoured the Pike River dead, as was right and proper. But now the hard part starts. What are we going to do for the Pike River survivors? The families who lost loved ones. The fellow workers who have now lost their livelihood.
Written By: - Date published: 9:49 pm, December 13th, 2010 - 32 comments
How journalists make a hypothetical question based on a nutty claim and manufacture a sensational headline out of it. The really sensational headline is that western journos appear to have picked up the story from that world renowned nutter Anthony Watts raving about a fictional war between Russia and Poland. It looks like you can only rely on hard checked science news from some of the rational blogs, and a Chinese news agency…
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, December 13th, 2010 - 13 comments
The UN climate change talks at Cancun, Mexico, are finished. There were some positives, but not on the big issues. Reduction targets are still voluntary and still too low. We’re still on a catastrophic collision course with the laws of physics.
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, December 10th, 2010 - 51 comments
To arms! To arms! The Food Police are coming! Remember how I led you in the battle to get junk food back into schools? It was a near-run thing. If we hadn’t acted, the days of the 12 year-old who can’t climb a flight of stairs without wheezing and going red in the face might have been numbered. Now, National has hypocritically betrayed us.
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, December 9th, 2010 - 9 comments
The Commissioner for the Environment’s “Lignite and Climate Change: The High Cost of Low Grade Coal” has been released today. Its release had been postponed because of concerns that it would become entangled with reports concerning the Pike River Mine disaster.
Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, December 6th, 2010 - 41 comments
The modern urge to label leaders who perform adequately during an emergency as ‘heroes’ astounds me. Particularly in the case of Pike River. Peter Whitall is a boss who just had 29 workers die on his work-site. While reserving judgment on his blame for that, I’m not going to call him a hero for doing a decent job for the cameras.
Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, December 5th, 2010 - 14 comments
There seems to have been a reasonable breakthrough in research to reverse ageing. Is it a good thing? If you think the world has resource and environmental problems now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If you think we have social injustice and insane inequities in wealth now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, December 5th, 2010 - 64 comments
This piece by Matt McCarten has already generated some discussion on Open Mike. Here are extracts, or click through for the full article. Matt pulls no punches…
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, December 4th, 2010 - 26 comments
I confess that I am used to thinking of China as a polluter, not much concerned with environmental standards or green technology. I am very pleased indeed to find that I am wrong. Green technology is yet another area where China is drawing ahead of America and much of the West.
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, December 4th, 2010 - 75 comments
Pike River Coal has been pushing for access to investigation interviews.
This kind of interference needs to be stopped before the investigation is compromised.
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, December 3rd, 2010 - 63 comments
Written By: - Date published: 8:09 am, December 2nd, 2010 - 11 comments
PM John Key has called for two minutes of national silence today at 2pm, to remember the 29 miners who lost their lives at Pike River.
Written By: - Date published: 11:36 pm, December 1st, 2010 - 121 comments
When they’re not polluting our rivers or fighting animal welfare laws, our farmers, the ‘guardians of the land’, are opposing having to pay for their greenhouse emissions. Now, with the Earth having just clocked up its warmest 12 months since records began, farmers are scratching their heads at the early start to the summer drought.
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, December 1st, 2010 - 61 comments
By backing a (soft) privatisation policy, David Cunliffe is throwing away a vital point of difference with National and allowing National to move rightwards. Worse, Labour appears to be determined to give up political advantage for dumb policy: public-private partnerships and tolling have a terrible track record.
Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, November 29th, 2010 - 24 comments
It seems I’m not alone in feeling outrage at attempts to bury any sensible debate on the shape and extent of New Zealand’s coal operations
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, November 29th, 2010 - 64 comments
It’s dismaying to see a few rightwing commentators using the Pike River disaster to attack restrictions on mining in national parks. The claims are baseless and crassly opportunistic. One expects the like of Matthew Hooton, Whaleoil, and Paul Holmes to try to score political points off tragedy but I thought better of Fran O’Sullivan.
Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, November 27th, 2010 - 71 comments
As the public and private mourning for the Pike River 29 continues, focus will begin to shift to how this event occurred with no less than five inquires soon to begin. John Armstrong has a very good article on the issues that will be in the spotlight. This is not about political point-scoring, it’s about preventing future tragedies. I ask for comments to be in that vein.
Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, November 27th, 2010 - 53 comments
On Monday the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference begins in Cancun, Mexico. This is the successor to last year’s spectacularly failed Copenhagen Summit. Nothing useful will be accomplished there. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that we lack the will to save ourselves.
Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, November 26th, 2010 - 14 comments
Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall has called on the country to mark one week since the West Coast mine exploded with a moment’s silence at 3.44pm today, in remembrance of the 29 men who died
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, November 25th, 2010 - 10 comments
It’s an incredibly sad day for NZ. Today the country mourns for the 29 miners who have lost their lives after a second explosion at the Pike River mine. Our thoughts are now with the families, the communities, and the people of the Coast. The Standard will keep its half mast headlined all day today. Anyone wishing to donate to help the families of the miners, the details are here.
Written By: - Date published: 6:17 am, November 25th, 2010 - 25 comments
It’s official: the Auckland CBD rail loop would bring more benefit to the country for its cost than any of National’s ‘Roads of National Significance’. And that’s even before we talk about peak oil. Any rational government would put the money into the project that gets most benefit for the taxpayer buck. Not this one.
Written By: - Date published: 5:01 pm, November 24th, 2010 - 116 comments
There has been a second explosion at the Pike River mine.
“Superintendent Gary Knowles told the Herald the miners couldn’t have survived a blast of that magnitude, which occurred at 2.37pm. Family members were seen crying as they left a police briefing a short time ago.”
My heart goes out to the families.
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, November 22nd, 2010 - 23 comments
The Commissioner for the Environment says New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions will be 26% above 1990 levels in 2020, compared to the Nats’ promise to cut them by 10-20% – leaving us with a $1b bill. Worse, the IEA shows that even if we and other countries meet our promised cuts its only half of what’s needed to avert disaster.
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 am, November 22nd, 2010 - 21 comments
It can only be an unthinkably tough time for all Pike River miners, their families, and the communities on the Coast. I’m sure I speak for all The Standard writers and contributors when I say that our thoughts are with them. Despite all the dire news so far three days after the explosion, we simply don’t have the full story till the rescue team get down there and try to bring these guys back to the surface. Till then, we can only hold on and hope.
Written By: - Date published: 7:37 am, November 22nd, 2010 - 196 comments
It takes many people working together to achieve anything really worthwhile. This also applies to our biggest project yet. Saving a planet. So why can’t we get started? Because human society based around the market can not do it. The answers will only com from the Left. The Left parties, Labour in particular, need to get serious and move Leftward.
Written By: - Date published: 5:02 pm, November 20th, 2010 - 38 comments
The news coming out from the Pike River mine disaster is not sounding good. Spare a thought tonight for the miners and their families.
Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, November 20th, 2010 - 102 comments
It has been a year since the CRU emails were stolen and the “climategate” “scandal” broke. There’s an interesting summary at the ClimateSight blog. Meanwhile the record temperatures keep rolling in, the ice keeps melting all over the world, and The Guardian asks “Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?”.
Written By: - Date published: 8:08 pm, November 19th, 2010 - 44 comments
I’ve just heard about the disaster at Pike River coal mine on the West Coast. [Updated] 29 miners are trapped 1500m below ground by a massive explosion. Five have made it out with moderate injuries. Obviously, there’s big concern for the lives of the missing workers. More details as they come – our thoughts are with their families.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, November 18th, 2010 - 16 comments
Bill English and brother Conner, CEO of Federated Farmers, share a vision for the world. It’s one where the environment and workers are exploited to the hilt in the name of ‘growth’ and the fruits of that ‘growth’ flow to a privileged elite (like the Englishes). Yesterday rich-boy Conner chided the rest of us with a speech titled “There is no free lunch”
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, November 15th, 2010 - 48 comments
We should treat the economy as a tool to serve our collective needs within the environment’s limits. Instead, we elevated it to the status of a god. Now, environmental degradation and resource exhaustion will leave us with no choice but to live within those limits. To do that, we need to build a system with two goals: fairness and sustainability.
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