Written By: - Date published: 7:34 am, June 2nd, 2010 - 26 comments
Worldwide it is the hottest Jan-Feb-March-April on record. Heat waves have already killed tens of thousands in the last few years. In India 2010 is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s, and hundreds are dead. While ACT and Federated Farmers bitch and moan about the costs of the ETS, the deaths will keep coming.
Written By: - Date published: 8:14 am, May 30th, 2010 - 38 comments
I knew that disasters in rich white countries get much more media than disasters anywhere else. I knew that oil was a dirty business. None the less, this article on the real costs of cheap oil surprised me.
Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, May 29th, 2010 - 25 comments
The Dominion Post has revealed that only hours after criticising National’s plans to mine on Great Barrier, Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye was seeking advice from Key and Brownlee’s offices on what to say to the media. Kaye has previously admitted to having had Key sign off on her original opposition but this latest revelation […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, May 28th, 2010 - 20 comments
Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, has announced it will no longer transport unsustainably harvested fish. New Zealand orange roughy is on the ban list. Good on Maersk. It’s not often you see a major corporate using its market power for good, putting the long-term future ahead of short-term profits. A wake up call for the government and the fishing industry.
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 am, May 27th, 2010 - 23 comments
National is under extraordinary pressure on its ETS, and it seems to be starting to panic. While I can commend them for sticking to their guns (better a gutted ETS than none at all), I don’t have any sympathy over the backlash they are facing. They bought it on themselves.
Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, May 26th, 2010 - 65 comments
We pay for the need to reduce greenhouse emissions one way or the other. There’s no point complaining about the cost of the ETS on power and fuel. What we should be more pissed off about is that we are being expected to bear half the cost as taxpayers. We have to pay, the question is whether we put the cost on pollution to discourage pollution or we just lump it on taxpayers.
Written By: - Date published: 4:01 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 11 comments
According to Newsroom [currently offline]: No money has been budgeted to pay for New Zealand’s contribution to a $44 billion component of the Copenhagen Accord on climate change or to withstand losses from the emissions trading scheme beyond Kyoto’s lifetime.
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, May 24th, 2010 - 16 comments
More bad news for the Government’s mining plans. The submission from the Committee of New Zealand Members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and a Shape NZ survey both indicate the need for them to back off. How long until they admit it?
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, May 24th, 2010 - 41 comments
In a move that can only be described as the fox guarding the hen house, the fishing industry has released plans for self-regulation entitled ‘Managing Our Own Ship’. National would be making a huge mistake to hand over more power to the fishing industry and in the end it would be the people who would have to deal with the consequences.
Written By: - Date published: 10:11 am, May 23rd, 2010 - 32 comments
We are so used to hearing that climate change is the most important environmental issue of our time, that to hear that biodiversity may require more urgent attention made me sit up and pay attention. As reported in the Guardian…
Written By: - Date published: 10:01 pm, May 18th, 2010 - 27 comments
The US Republican Party faces destruction at the hands of the Teabaggers, a reactionary movement based on ignorance and fear that the Republican leadership purposely created. National faces a similar risk. It cynically fed its members anti-climate change conspiracy theorist nonsense. Now the Nats have to govern but their knuckle-draggers are fighting back.
Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, May 18th, 2010 - 11 comments
Yesterday I posted on John Key being named “Dim bulb of the week” by the San Francisco Examiner. Continuing with a dim bulb theme – let’s talk about Edison Hour, as it is explained to us by a budding genius from ACT…
Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, May 16th, 2010 - 61 comments
Tau Henare is opposing Labour’s suggested policy of taking GST off fruit and vegetables saying “If they can’t afford to buy a lettuce or a tomato then they should give up the drink and the smokes,” and “It’s a well-known fact that poor people, if they don’t have enough money, will buy smokes and not bread.” Really? Well, it took two minutes checking on the Stats’ website to prove him wrong.
Written By: - Date published: 2:26 pm, May 15th, 2010 - 9 comments
The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. They have stated ‘It is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives.’ National has taken up the cause wholeheartedly in a variety of weird ways. They seem hell bent on enacting policies that will do nothing but destroy biodiversity in the name of the economic growth.
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, May 15th, 2010 - 20 comments
You sometimes have to wonder about headline writers sometimes (including myself). But take a look at this one from Bloomberg.com, a site with a focus on investment. Windmill Boom Curbs Electric Power Prices for RWE RWE AG is a power utility and wind farm operator in Germany. The reason that they’re getting reduced prices for […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:06 am, May 15th, 2010 - 6 comments
Here in NZ we have the issue of mining front and centre, with assurances that it will be done with due process. Gerry Brownlee must be feeling frustrated at the senario in the US which vividly illustrates what can happen when it all goes wrong. This NY Times examines how the situation came to be…
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 pm, May 13th, 2010 - 9 comments
Yesterday, No Right Turn wrote this post pointing out a case where L&M Lignite has a exploration license on schedule 4 conservation land granted back in 2003 before a schedule 4 site was expanded.. The legislation for putting land into schedule 4 needs to be amended to remove such licenses when land is moved into a protected status.
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 pm, May 13th, 2010 - 38 comments
Peter Gluckman is easily one of New Zealand’s most over-rated, under-examined public figures. Although little more than a corporate frontman out to extract as many public dollars for private interests as he can lay his hands on, because he’s called ‘Sir’ and he’s all ‘sciencey’ a lot of the tripe he spews goes unchecked. Well, not this time. […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, May 13th, 2010 - 11 comments
The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports. Excellent idea, what could possibly go wrong? That was sarcasm, by the way.
Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, May 13th, 2010 - 5 comments
The Conservative/ Lib Dem alliance is good news for the climate, with the coalition already stating its committment to a low carbon, “eco-friendly economy”. Will Key show any of the same vision next week?
Written By: - Date published: 12:11 pm, May 12th, 2010 - 18 comments
A recent open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences (including 11 Nobel laureates) calls for “an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues …, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them”.
Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, May 12th, 2010 - 7 comments
The Herald editorial is rightly damning of the government’s lacklustre approach to science funding. The ‘new’ money is a trickle, barely replacing last year’s cuts. A crucial difference between Labour and National has always been that Labour invests in the long-term success of the country while National makes short-term wealth grabs for the ruling elite.
Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, May 11th, 2010 - 27 comments
It looks like National is about to cave in to public opinion and abandon its ridiculous plans to mine on New Zealand’s most precious land. Good. The economics never made any sense, let alone the environmental case. The Nats’ economic ‘plan’ looks even thinner now. Here’s something they can do – sort out the minerals royalty and leases on mining concessions.
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, May 10th, 2010 - 11 comments
If, as seems increasingly likely, the Government drops its plans to desecrate the best of schedule 4 land, will it be cause for celebration? In a word, no. Kathy at Greenpeace weblog examines Brownlee and his wet dreams
Written By: - Date published: 12:04 pm, May 9th, 2010 - 37 comments
As a NIWA vessel heads out to investigate the mineral potential of seamounts, Gerry Brownlee says: “We have no plans whatsoever to prospect offshore”. The truth is, Brownlee has already given underwater mining the go ahead. Back in February, Brownlee issued a permit to Widespread Portfolios for prospecting 4,700 sqkm of the Chatham Rise.
Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, May 7th, 2010 - 13 comments
We’re in the middle of another slowly unfolding oil disaster. On April 20 the “Deepwater Horizon”, a British Petroleum oil rig, exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and starting what is fast becoming the the largest oil spill in history. It’s an environmental catastrophe. But can we salvage a long term upside?
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 pm, May 4th, 2010 - 33 comments
Steven Joyce has virtually ruled out Kiwirail building its new trains here in New Zealand. The Aussies have a completely different view about government purchasing, as I learnt from my years on the Industrial Supplies Office management committee in the 1990’s. They believe in Australian jobs for Australian money.
Written By: - Date published: 3:27 pm, May 4th, 2010 - 28 comments
In 2000, Labour gave permission for two companies to carry out traditional gold-panning for tourism purposes on Schedule 4 land. National seems to think this is a great scandal. As if zero-impact gold-panning in rivers is comparable to gold cast mines and massive tailings lakes. They’re really getting desperate, aren’t they?
Written By: - Date published: 2:42 pm, May 4th, 2010 - 25 comments
When you’re that far on the backfoot, it’s not hard to teeter further. The CTU has today come out against the Government’s mining plans; a position even Brownlee admits is “a bit of a surprise” given the union’s membership includes miners. What’s the score now? I say time for a quick tally. We’ve got the […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, May 4th, 2010 - 7 comments
The Nats and miners have this weird freeloader argument. ‘Those protesters are hypocrites. Their cell phones and ipods and cars all use mined products. They should support us mining’. They won’t be mining needed industrial minerals. But what’s under Paparoa? Dirty coal. What’s under Coromandel and Barrier? Gold. which is nearly all used for jewellery and ‘investment’.
Written By: - Date published: 1:34 pm, May 3rd, 2010 - 26 comments
This is not a time for mixed messages. Phil Goff is quoted today as saying: “They [the Government] have got to back down from both Great Barrier Island and the Coromandel”. No! Labour’s position, and the position of the biggest single protest march since 1938, is no mining in any Schedule 4 land! Don’t dilute the message…
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