Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, March 29th, 2009 - Comments Off on What’s a Poor Pragmatic Key to do?
Just when the Kiwi corporate kleptocracy was kicking into high gear to ensure that the taxpayer is properly stuck with the paying the whole of New Zealand’s Kyoto carbon bill according to the time honoured ‘privatise the profit, socialize the loss’ principle, the Labour /Green Opposition may well crank up the thermostat on the Govt […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, March 26th, 2009 - 10 comments
Toad’s post on coastal shipping deserves re-posting: Coastal shipping is the most energy efficient means of moving freight. A ship consumes 75 – 80 percent less fuel than a truck per tonne hauled. It’s just got to be the way to go. The United States finally seems to be seeing this. A Bill before the […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, March 26th, 2009 - 39 comments
Stephen Joyce keeps saying the reason he has slashed investment in public transport to build more roads is that he is giving the people what they want. He says most people get to work in a car, so people must want cars. What wonderful logic. Imagine if we hadn’t introduced public health-care or public education because, […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:46 pm, March 24th, 2009 - 27 comments
We’ve been outed! By none other than Thelma (or was it Louise?) A promotional video for climate action, voiced by Susan Sarandon for Greenpeace in the US, holds New Zealand up as a beacon of hope on a sickly earth praising the former Labour Government’s plan to ban energy inefficient bulbs by 2009. Unfortunately for […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:31 pm, March 20th, 2009 - 61 comments
The preliminary results of a drill by the ANDRILL (Antarctic Geological Drilling) were published in the print edition of Nature this week. It has shown a history of the previous retreat and collapses of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The WAIS melt with its vast stores of solid water, and even more in the […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, March 20th, 2009 - 34 comments
The Government is taking nearly half a billion dollars out of public transport, cycling, walking, road maintance, and traffic policing to pay for more state highways. Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s reasoning for this – ‘86% of people go to work by car’. Doesn’t he get that people have to go by car because there aren’t […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:17 pm, March 18th, 2009 - 20 comments
This morning I spotted a poignant example of the inequalities inherent in tackling climate change. The Maldives have announced they’ll go carbon neutral by 2020. Newly elected President Mohamed Nasheed says his small archipelago nation will hereby spurn fossil fuels – opting instead for wind and solar power – and buy EU carbon credits to […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:36 pm, March 16th, 2009 - 47 comments
Fancy a restful island holiday? If the Cateret Island was your chosen destination you might want to travel sooner rather than later according to CNN: There is one holiday destination that should shake the faith of even the most vehement climate change skeptic: the Carteret Islands, part of Papua New Guinea, located northeast of Bougainville… […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:17 pm, March 10th, 2009 - 21 comments
The National/ACT Government’s axe has fallen on the Environment Ministry today, with staff being flown to Wellington to discover a raft of environmental programmes introduced by the last government will be scrapped. With them will go at least 18 jobs, making a mockery of the Government’s election pledge to merely “cap” rather than cut the […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, March 6th, 2009 - 18 comments
It’s been said by some of the Government’s supporters that criticism of the Job Summit is nothing more than rantings of the embittered Left. Well, I may be doing Chairman of Meat and Wool NZ Mike Petersen a great disservice, but I’m willing to gamble that he’s not a hardcore lefty. Here’s what Petersen had […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:58 am, March 5th, 2009 - 79 comments
The latest New Scientist brings together the work of thousands of scientists to describe what would happen to the world if the global temperature rises by 4 degrees, which is the mid-range for the projected increases due to climate change. Many of you will simply continue to reject the notion of climate change and its […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:16 pm, February 27th, 2009 - 1 comment
Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, February 27th, 2009 - 36 comments
According to Stuff: “Another idea on the table [at the Jobs Summit] is a $50 million cycleway built the length of the country. It would provide 3700 jobs and would take two years to build. The government is keen on it for its tourist potential.” A summit attendee writes: “Oh dear. Less than four months […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 pm, February 13th, 2009 - 19 comments
Today is the anniversary of two of histories great names – Darwin and Lincoln. Both men made significant (albeit different) contributions to our current understanding of the world. Simon Jenkins of the Guardian asks which was the greater? Was it the man who transformed our understanding of the human race, or the man who made […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, February 4th, 2009 - Comments Off on Fonterra set to simmer
Lawyer Stephen Price has rubbished Fonterra’s claim that the Chinese sub judice status of the Sanlu case prevents Fonterra releasing documentation of their communications. Price also doubts any discussion of the issues here would influence the outcome of Sanlu Chairwoman Tian Wenhau’s appeal. The criticism comes after Fonterra claimed it advised Sanlu only 0% melamine was acceptable […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, February 4th, 2009 - 13 comments
Our guest RMA expert, offers an analysis of National’s proposed changes to our resource management framework: National’s phase one RMA review document looks good at a first glance, but after a detailed look fish hooks, and the right-wing agenda, are more and more evident. The phase one review is clearly set up to bulldoze through big development […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:42 pm, February 3rd, 2009 - 22 comments
We’ve got an expert guest post coming on National’s newly announced RMA changes. I’ve got a few brief(ish), non-expert thoughts first (which, hopefully won’t be totally contradicted by the expert making me look dumb) 1. It’s good to see that National has dropped its initial proposal of changing the definition of ‘environment’ in the RMA […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, February 2nd, 2009 - 6 comments
The Sunday-Star Times has an article on National’s proposed RMA changes. Unfortunately, it’s just Nick Smith describing the changes. And, surprise, he doesn’t mention changing the definition of environment, the crucial change (we discuss the consequences of the change here). Fortunately, it’s all online here. You can read not only the changes that National wants to […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, January 30th, 2009 - 12 comments
Last night, I heard something worrying. It was Gareth Morgan saying he can’t ‘see through’ this recession; that he can’t see the economic mechanism that will turn things around and get us growing again. He had already dismissed interest rate slashing and stimulus packages as ‘necessary but insufficent’. In the end he resorted to the […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:39 pm, January 30th, 2009 - 9 comments
Our economy depends on other key resources apart from oil. For instance our farming sector still depends heavily on using phosphates to increase soil fertility. Since our farming sector provides at more than half of the export income, it got a little disturbing to read about the limited security of supply. For most of last […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, January 30th, 2009 - 1 comment
I attended the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji back in 2006. The shadow of Bainimarama’s approaching coup hung over the forum but it wasn’t enough to quell the heat as we sat in our ridiculously ill-suited suits through endless, pointless meetings. Nothing was achieved and everyone clapped each other on the back for a job […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, January 27th, 2009 - 46 comments
We have received information that National’s plan to change the definition of ‘environment’ under the RMA in their 100-day legislation roll out will consist of removing the legal protection of a range of important parts of NZ’s environment, such as eco-systems, amenity values (e.g. the look and appearance of a landscape or townscape) and the […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:26 pm, January 21st, 2009 - 16 comments
Gerry Brownlee was puffing smoke this Wednesday morning about his daft (in terms of the Kyoto agreement) decision last month to remove the ban on thermal generation of power. It reminded me of something I’d seen recently, so I dug back through the mental archives. Eventually I re-discovered the mysterious coincidences between the decisions of […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, January 14th, 2009 - 24 comments
We all know the story of the sub-prime crisis that had developed into the credit crisis – a flood of credit saw mortgage lenders lending to anyone, including people who couldn’t really afford the repayments. To get these potentially bad loans off their books, the banks pooled them together into new, unregulated instruments and sold […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, January 12th, 2009 - 40 comments
We’ve seen that oil production in oil fields and countries peaks long before the oil actually runs out, and as individual countries go, so must, inevitably go the world. Once the amount of oil the world is capable of producing starts to fall, things are going to get difficult. Our economy is the use of […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:24 pm, January 9th, 2009 - 27 comments
There is only so much oil in the world. It was all formed when, over the course of a few hundred million years, creatures living in shallow seas died and their remains accumulated and were subjected to a very particular combination of heat and pressure for hundreds of millions of years. We know where all the sedimentary […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:08 pm, January 8th, 2009 - 35 comments
The more I learn about energy, and peak oil in particular, the more concerned I get. So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I would share some of it with you. I’ll get to some concrete things we need to start doing now to mitigate as much as we can the impact of falling […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, January 4th, 2009 - 33 comments
Submissions for the review of the Emissions Trading Scheme have opened but will close on the 13th of February. Given the time of year that’s a reasonably short submitting period, especially for legislation that has such far-reaching implications for New Zealand’s economy and international reputation. I expect the vested industry interests will have their submissions […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:39 am, January 4th, 2009 - 26 comments
I’m always amazed about the level of sheer scientific ignorance of most of the climate change deniers. Characteristically ridiculous statements (and scientifically humorous) usually emit from them like CO2 emissions from a coal fired power station. For instance, Garth George in the NZ Herald on his new years eve article said In Britain, the Meteorological […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:34 am, January 3rd, 2009 - 28 comments
National’s decision to allow a 40% increase in endangered Sea Lion kill-quota for the squid fishing industry is old news but I haven’t seen it covered anywhere except in a link in one of Steve’s posts a week or so ago so I’m assuming it was lost in the xmas rush. It shouldn’t have been. […]
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