The distracting political stupidities in places like the US and now in Russia tend to be entertaining for us southerners. But changes in climate are getting faster and more extreme. The continued instability in the northern polar vortex and the extreme weather it causes cut into our global food creating systems. The foundation of our population and societies. Froggies, the heat is still rising.
“We want our government to listen to us as youth and as New Zealanders. Our house is on fire, and soon, all that we know will be too”
School Strike 4 Climate’s rally on Tuesday will present demands to the government on what action needs to be taken now.
2021, the climate emergency is still an emergency. Personal action is not sufficient but it’s still necessary.
Welcome to 2021. This is the year for the Labour Government to be brave. What should it seek to achieve this year?
There is always plenty of bad news when it comes to nature in New Zealand, but this year has had an accumulation of good.
The Government’s finances are in remarkably good shape. Who would have predicted that dealing properly with a global pandemic would have had better results for the economy than timidly dealing with it and trying to ensure that economic activity continued? But by international levels our Government debt is already low and maybe now is the time to spend on vital areas such as poverty, climate change and the housing crisis.
The Prime Minister is talking about demonstrating a plan for action, but as we move into 2021 we need to settle back into grappling with the urgency of the climate crisis.
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff’s recently released budget proposal for Auckland Council contains some welcome proposals to address climate change. But of itself this budget will not go near to achieving Auckland’s goal of halving emissions by 50% in 2030.
Bridging the gap between the people who are involved in proactive, regenerative responses to the climate, ecological and social crises, and those who don’t know this is happening, feel overwhelmed, and don’t know what to do.
Climate goals explained.
Green tech, negative emissions and carbon capture and storage won’t save us, but we have other options.
Parliament has finally declared that the country is in a climate emergency. And it has also told the public service that it has to become carbon neutral within five years.
Australia is likely to have less of an issue with raging bush fires this year. La Niña is likely to give a break to the droughts with a wetter East Coast. Doesn’t stop record heatwaves as is happening at present. Climate change in action. What is also happening is equally predictable – the power systems get affected as well. Interesting to consider for similar climate issues here hitting our power.
I’m sure one needs a particular depth of political nerdiness to give a flying fig about such things, but since I am one of those, these are my highlights from the speech from the throne to Parliament this week.
With news of more global stressors next year, the stories we tell right now are critical to how we build resiliency. Let’s make sure they are good ones.
Until the pandemic, air travel was one of the fastest growing causes of greenhouse gas emissions. And its obscenely unequal, with just 1% of the world’s population causing 50% of the problem:
This government must demonstrate that it has the ability to lead the New Zealand economy where it has stated it wants it to go. It does not want more headlines like the average house in Auckland now being priced at $1 million.
Christchurch transition engineer Susan Krumdieck lays out the realities of the various crises we are facing, and why green tech won’t save us. What can we do instead?
Jacinda Ardern’s decision to rename the Fisheries Ministery to “Oceans and Fisheries” and install David Parker instead of Stuart Nash shows a welcome desire to protect this most precious of resources.
The Sustainable Business Council has released a list of priorities for the new government. And they are pretty good.
Newly appointed Republican and Trump supported Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is not convinced that humans are changing the world’s climate. Meanwhile China and Japan are convinced and have announced dates by which time they intend to be carbon neutral.
A new Ministry for the Environment report on New Zealand and the climate crisis is sobering. If you haven’t voted, climate is still by far New Zealand’s biggest challenge, and it’s the Greens that have the plan for what to do.
Here’s the thing about the Greens. They want change. They want change more than they want power. I think that they fully understand that we are out of time on climate, poverty, the environment and now is the time to act boldly.
“The Green Party welcomes Labour’s commitment to reduce climate emissions in the next term of Government, but would go further and faster to address the true scale of the crisis.”
This Guest Post by The Scud looks at the issues with the NZ Defence Force’s capability in responding to extreme fire events and climate change.
A large wildfire has destroyed many homes in the village of Ohau in the Mackenzie Country, and hundreds of people have been evacuated.
All of these policies will get fossil cars off the roads, reducing emissions.
Ten months ago National supported the Zero Carbon Bill and called for a consensus between the major political parties on the overall framework through which climate change issues are addressed. This week National trashed all of that to try and shore up its sagging support.
This is exactly the kind of approach the Green Party would like to encourage – it’s strategic, it’s intergenerational and it recognises the interconnectedness of our people, the environment and local communities.
For the last 30 years, earth scientists have been warning that Greenland was nearing a tipping point into complete disintegration. Now authors of a new study published in Nature has claimed that, even if the climate now reverted to the levels where it was stable a few decades ago, that would still happen. It is now clear that the IPCC worst case for Greenland is what is now being observed.
Inasmuch as tiny, distant New Zealand need worry about the foreign policy of the United States, it’s worth a drill into what a Democratic Party dominated United States foreign policy might look like.
Covid has fundamentally changed society for the better in surprising ways.
Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better. How then to ‘bounce forward’ from COVID-19 in such a way that we also move to a way of doing things consistent with the scale of the climate crisis?
As climate, ecological, pandemic and neoliberal pressures put our food security at risk, we can take heart from the many people who have been developing and practicing sustainable and resilient food growing.
The Greens have released a detailed policy document that sets out what they want to achieve if they are part of the next Government and their Labour Relations policies could be considered to be more pro union than Labour’s policies.
What is the strangest recent proposal for development in New Zealand?
