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: 4:36 pm, December 17th, 2008 - 21 comments
Gerry ‘sexy coal’ Brownlee has spent today ripping apart more anti-climate change laws. Today, under urgency and without the opportunity for the public to contribute via the select committee process, National/ACT has repealed the Biofuels requirement and is now in the process of repealing the ‘ban’ on new baseload fossil fuel power plants. Disturbingly National/ACT’s […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, December 15th, 2008 - 39 comments
Tourism New Zealand has recently launched its dedicated YouTube channel – Have Your Say – where tourists can post video messages about their experiences while visiting here via a mobile studio. Here’s what our new PM, Minister of Tourism, and veteran YouTube user John Key had to say. But while John’s out there on YouTube doing the hard […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, December 10th, 2008 - 10 comments
Have you heard the sad news that the EU may be next to join the international communist nanny-state conspiracy against incandescent bulbs? It seems EU bureaucrats have published a “report” which calls for a ban on the freedom-loving inefficient bulbs which have kept our planet warm for almost 130 years. Thank goodness ordinary decent New […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:14 pm, December 9th, 2008 - 55 comments
Rodney Hide on National and ACT’s select committee into the ETS: “I am especially pleased to see that the issue of the scientific and trade implications will be considered alongside the impacts on the economy. “There is definitely not a monolithic view on the fact of human induced climate change and I welcome this government’s […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, December 9th, 2008 - 3 comments
In case, like me, you tend to mainly read the news online, here’s what was stuck to the Dominion Post this morning:
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, December 5th, 2008 - 15 comments
Murray McCully has just used his recently acquired ministerial discretion to allow Fiji’s under-20 soccer team to enter New Zealand in transit on its way to a tournament in Tahiti. This is broadly at odds with the Labour government’s sanctions following the coup in 2006 (though they did grant the Fiji sevens team permission to […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, December 2nd, 2008 - 27 comments
This classic myth is used by National/ACT as an excuse to not do anything about climate change and, now, to attempt to undermine emissions reduction targets in the international climate change agreement to succeed Kyoto. And it is nothing more than a myth. Between 1990 and 2005, agriculture became 30% more efficient in terms of […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 pm, November 27th, 2008 - 47 comments
National/ACT has only been in power a week, but the flip-flops keep coming. Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee will not confirm that that National/ACT will reversing the new light-bulb standards. This after they campaigned hard against these standards and Key repeatedly promised that under a National government people would not be told which type of light-bulbs they can use. Brownlee […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, November 27th, 2008 - 92 comments
Don’t let Key go abroad representing us again until he has had some diplomacy training. I can’t believe, I literally can’t believe, the comments he has made in the UK. In addition to the comments yesterday, where he called the new carbon-offset airport departure tax “protectionism” and said it will lead to a “contagion effect”, […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, November 26th, 2008 - 56 comments
The UK has announced plans to increase departure tax from its airports for flights outside Europe to pay for offsetting their carbon emissions. This is part of the worldwide response to climate change – countries are making emitters pay and even aviation, which is excluded from Kyoto, is now being targeted (quite rightly too, it […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, November 21st, 2008 - 98 comments
According to a leading financier, carbon credit broker Nigel Brunel, of OMF Financial, New Zealand has become “a bit of a joke” in Europe as National/ACT looks set to delay, even abolish, our Emissions Trading Scheme. If you’ll forgive me an anecdote, I’m reminded of the introduction seminar when I was at uni in Finland. We […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:49 pm, November 19th, 2008 - 73 comments
The National Party’s decision to resurrect the idea of a carbon tax is one of the most cynical plays I’ve seen in a while, coming from a party that opposed a carbon tax from day one. In fact, for all their hollow attacks on Labour’s climate change record it’s been National that has campaigned harder […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:46 pm, November 15th, 2008 - 34 comments
With a masterful awareness of the import of his actions, President Roosevelt termed his economic program to lift the US out of the Great Depression ‘the New Deal’. Laissez-faire capitalism, whereby the ‘invisible hand of the market’ ruled, had failed to fulfil the conditions of the social contract (a fair distribution of wealth between capital […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, November 14th, 2008 - 17 comments
From Scoop: The hapless polar bear that emerged during the recent TVNZ You-Tube leaders debate has resurfaced to issue a plea to Prime Minister-elect John Key. “The planet is on the slide due to climate change,” stresses the bear. “Me and my ilk are like canaries in the coal mine. But by-God we’re not the […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:22 pm, October 31st, 2008 - 34 comments
Some great political theatre from Greenpeace yesterday. A bunch of climate activists got up at the crack of dawn, plastered ready-made lawn around the outside of John Key’s electorate office, then put up some wee pine trees and stumps alongside a billboard saying ‘Would John solve this climate crime?’ Looks like a couple of them […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, October 14th, 2008 - 90 comments
National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This massive programme would improve energy efficiency, create warmer, healthier homes and would provide useful employment during the downturn. A study, ironically carried out under National and mentioned to me […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, October 9th, 2008 - 43 comments
The Greens have announced that they will choose their preferred coalition partner based on their commitment to 12 criteria. I’ll just look at 5 (not that the others are less important, just space): reduce New Zealand’s oil dependence and climate change emissions; – senior Nats don’t even think climate change is happening and the Party […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, September 26th, 2008 - 42 comments
We all knew New Zealand was in recession in the first six months of this year. The official figures have confirmed this. The surprise though is on the upside. The consensus had been that the economy had shrunk 0.5% in the quarter. In fact, it was 0.2%. Remember that this figure occurred during the height of […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, September 25th, 2008 - 23 comments
Incredibly, leading rightwingers including John Key, Maurice Williamson, Lockwood Smith, Rodney Hide, and Roger Kerr still don’t accept the overwhelming evidence for climate change. A cynic would say that’s just because it’s in their interests to engage in this wishful thinking. But maybe that’s too harsh, maybe they’ve just been suckered in by sophisicated marketing, like this: [hattip […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:55 pm, September 9th, 2008 - 48 comments
Boosting their green credentials is not proving as straightforward as National would like, as this video that’s doing the rounds shows.
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, August 27th, 2008 - 21 comments
The Greens have won some very good improvements to the ETS in exchange for their support. The most important is $1 billion over 15 years to insulate low-income homes and subsidise upgrades to insulation of higher income homes. That’s a really positive development; all New Zealand homes will finally have decent insulation (Labour has done well […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, August 22nd, 2008 - 22 comments
One thing you can always say for the Greens, they’re democratic to their core. Currently, they find themselves facing a tough choice – whether or not to support Labour’s Emissions Trading Scheme – and, true to their democratic principles, they’re asking for advice from the public on their decision. Jeanette Fitzsimmons outlines the following pros […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, August 22nd, 2008 - 16 comments
Reading National’s energy policy last week I was surprised to learn that of 1942MW of new generation that has come online since 2000 1073MW of that has been thermal*. Sure enough, John Key is going around using that as a ground for National’s policy of building more gas power plants and giving up on the […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, August 21st, 2008 - 70 comments
Deputy leader Bill English yesterday late afternoon released what could barely be described as National’s policy on climate change. I was sorry to see such little detail on what they planned, despite his saying (again) that their structure would be in place within nine months. Surely they must know what they plan to do then? I also noted […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, August 20th, 2008 - 53 comments
John Key called us to task in his interview with Wammo today: “every leftwing blogger out there has a field-day going on and on about the fact that Labour say I said climate change is a hoax…they should just get their facts right down at The Standard because the facts are I said ‘Kyoto is […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, July 15th, 2008 - 38 comments
Australia’s ABC has a somewhat unusual online game to explain the impact of individuals on climate change to children. It’s called ‘Planet Slayer‘. The main part of the game involves answering questions (which really only apply to adults) around use of cars, house size etc to estimate your annual greenhouse gas emissions.Your cumulative emissions are […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, July 11th, 2008 - 3 comments
The day that National Radio publicises a ‘survey’ produced by Matthew Hooton is a very strange day. That day is today. Hooton’s ‘independent’ ‘survey’ finds flaws in the Emissions Trading Scheme. ‘Amazing’. For those with long memories, it reminds one of a survey the Sunday News ran back in the Dark Ages (early ’96) when […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:12 pm, July 2nd, 2008 - 46 comments
A classic ‘cake and eat it’ from Crosby/Textor National has been their approach to climate change – stating they support tackling this issue but opposing every policy that has been developed. The latest example is their position on the ETS, which No Right Turn explains beautifully: Reading the National Party’s minority report [PDF] on the […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, June 12th, 2008 - 15 comments
BBC and TVE screen an Earth Report special this week focussing on New Zealand’s objective to become carbon neutral: New Zealand, host for World Environment Day 2008, plans to be the first to create a completely carbon neutral economy. Their target is 2020 and they have ambitious plans to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions with […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:20 pm, May 28th, 2008 - 45 comments
The Dompost reports that the Greens will not vote for the Emissions Trading Scheme if the introduction of transport fuels into the scheme and the end of free allocation of credits are delayed. Without the Greens, the Bill will probably not pass. I have a lot of sympathy for the Greens’ position. The ETS is […]
Recent Comments