Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, May 27th, 2008 - 74 comments
We’ve all heard John Key bang on about his ambitions for New Zealand’s infrastructure and now one of my sources within the National Party has tipped me off that as part of their infrastructure policy they are planning to announce a plan for a four lane highway between Wellington and Auckland. As I recall this […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:02 pm, May 19th, 2008 - 26 comments
National has pulled its support for the emissions trading scheme which is intended to set limits on the emission of greenhouse gases and penalise polluters. This is the latest in a long line of Key’s shifting positions on climate change. First climate change was a “complete and utter hoax”. Then as the environmental mood gained momentum […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:46 am, May 19th, 2008 - 33 comments
Last year John Key announced National’s ‘Blue-Green’ Strategy. It contained the first shadow of acknowledgment from National that climate change is a serious issue: a target to reduce greenhouse gas emission to 50% of 1990 levels by 2050. Of course, setting a target for a time when most of your MPs will be dead is […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, May 14th, 2008 - 72 comments
Rio Tinto’s threat of capital strike appears to have backfired on them, with a political consensus emerging that the multinational has overplayed its hand on this one and some even starting to question whether we might be better to just shut the smelter down and be done with it. CAFCA were particularly blunt: Campaign Against […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, May 13th, 2008 - 87 comments
Multi-national minerals company Rio Tinto is threatening to close its Tiwai Point aluminium smelter in Bluff and move its production offshore if the Emissions Trading Scheme is enacted because they say it will increase power prices. This is not the first time Rio Tinto has held New Zealand to ransom using the threat of closing […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:04 am, May 6th, 2008 - 19 comments
The Government has delayed the inclusion of transport in the Emissions Trading Scheme from 2009 to 2011. On the surface, that seems to be a back down or a reduction in the Government’s commitment to tackling climate change but then you have to ask yourself what is the point of the Emissions Trading Scheme? As […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, April 30th, 2008 - 3 comments
It’s not often National gets something right but their latest flip-flop, on bio-fuels, is a good policy (well, partially and for the wrong reasons). National has announced they will no longer be supporting the bio-fuel requirement in petrol because it may put up the price of petrol a few cents. The bio-fuel requirement was always […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:19 pm, April 23rd, 2008 - 4 comments
The Climate Science Coalition is the last of a dying breed; a rabid, climate change denying lobby group. Of late, they have been performing a desperate, last-ditch attempt to slow the introduction of a carbon trading scheme. And, now, it looks like they’ve received some heavy-weight support in the form of the venerable Flat Earth Society:
Written By: - Date published: 4:59 pm, April 3rd, 2008 - 28 comments
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 2nd, 2008 - 36 comments
Lockwood Smith gave us student debt. Maurice Williamson gave us traffic jams. Now they want to give us global warming. Just days after Al Gore launched his $300m worldwide climate change campaign National retreads Maurice Williamson and Lockwood Smith are refusing to answer questions about whether or not they even believe climate change is happening. […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:44 am, April 1st, 2008 - 2 comments
Al Gore has just launched a $300 million, bipartisan campaign to try to push climate change higher on the nation’s political agenda. The website is www.wecansolveit.org – you can see the debut ad, “Anthem,” here. The campaign plans to bring together “unlikely bedfellows” of differing political stripes and use shows like American Idol to promote […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:25 pm, March 26th, 2008 - 10 comments
The Vatican’s update of sins to include issues of social justice and environment reminded me of a conversation I had recently with a friend from the US. She was telling me that one of the “surprise” groups to come out in support of tougher environmental regulation over there were a number of the large evangelical […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, March 26th, 2008 - 18 comments
New Zealand’s coal industry is a mess of contradictions. We worry about carbon emissions and Kyoto while State-owned Solid Energy exports coal to dirty Chinese factories. Rather than being energy-efficiently shipped out of Greymouth, coal from the West Coast is taken by rail over the Southern Alps because taxpayer-subsidised Toll gives SOE Solid Energy and Pike River a cut-price deal to haul […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:45 pm, March 14th, 2008 - 28 comments
Frogblog covers Muriel Newman’s column in the Dom yesterday: “Climate change, we didn’t do it” [whew! back to my environmentally pollutive and destructive ways then]. Muriel’s source for this assertion is the recent (and delightfully innocuously named) International Conference on Climate Change. The purpose of the conference is to promote doubt over the increasing scientific […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, March 11th, 2008 - 26 comments
The ABC reports: “Today Australia becomes an official member of the Kyoto club after the initial ratification documents were lodged with the United Nations 90 days ago. And a new poll has found that 64 per cent of Australians support Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s act to ratify the Kyoto protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions. […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:37 pm, December 17th, 2007 - 21 comments
Another video from TED: “I don’t think we’re going to make it,” John Doerr proclaims, in an emotional talk about climate change and investment. Spurred on by his daughter, who demanded he fix the mess the world is heading for, he and his partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers embarked on a greentech world […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, December 14th, 2007 - 28 comments
Here’s a clip that aired last night on TV3. It shows NZ leading the world in our response to climate change in Bali. To quote the reporter, New Zealand is “…putting words into action… [announcing] ambitious plans to go carbon neutral”. National on the other hand has no credibility on climate change. They don’t have […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:21 pm, December 12th, 2007 - 4 comments
Al Gore has just accepted his Nobel Peace Prize for advocacy for action on climate change. In his speech he’s lauded Kevin Rudd’s immediate commitment to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on climate change – he did it only days after assuming office. The move to ratify leaves the United States as the only developed nation […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:02 pm, December 11th, 2007 - 11 comments
It was once a matter of personal preference. Now it’s part of the sustainability story. Do you prefer the uniform shape, colour, ease of the plastic fantastic, or was the distinctive aroma of pine sap and rustle of pine needles a defining characteristic of your Xmas experience? Well now there’s the ethical question to add […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:06 am, December 11th, 2007 - 7 comments
There’s a new taxi fleet servicing Wellington and (in three days time) Auckland. The vehicles are all Toyota Prius hybrids and the company, Greencabs, also offsets the residual emissions making it, they claim, the country’s first carbon neutral taxi company. They tell me they’re also the cheapest in town – presumably because the fuel consumption […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, December 7th, 2007 - 15 comments
The PM has launched a new website, sustainability.govt.nz challenging citizens to commit to doing one thing to help contribute to a “sustainable nation”.
Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, December 6th, 2007 - 15 comments
From the Guardian: “Australia yesterday joined the fold of rich countries committed to tackling climate change by signing the Kyoto agreement to limit CO2 emissions, at once distancing itself from the US and ending a 10-year diplomatic exile on the issue.” So where does that leave the US? And as for Mr Key, he’s struggled […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:54 pm, December 5th, 2007 - 5 comments
Popular Science has recently announced its “Grand Award Winner” in the “Green” category: PowerSheet solar cells. ‘Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity… “You’re talking about printing rolls of the stuff—printing it on the roofs of 18-wheeler trailers, […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, November 29th, 2007 - 12 comments
From the NYT: Google, the Internet company with a seemingly limitless source of revenue, plans to get into the business of finding limitless sources of energy… Google said it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars, part of that to hire engineers and energy experts to investigate alternative energies like solar, geothermal and wind power. […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:50 am, November 20th, 2007 - 1 comment
Fortunately we have a government that’s prepared to act on climate change rather than gamble with the future. Nevertheless here’s an interesting take on the importance of a meaningful response to climate change based on everybody’s favourite PHIL101 poser: Pascal’s Wager. He’s also done a follow-up to answer some of the questions and objections that […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:26 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 10 comments
Esteemed Tory Brit-econ-pop-enviro-guru Nigel Lawson, Lord of Blaby, dad of Nigella, is not bonkers. Lord Blaby (Ed: shurely not? Wot? It is true?), who is visiting New Zealand, allegedly to attend a Business Roundtable party, told TVNZ’s Breakfast that the world could adjust to global warming because people don’t find Singapore too hot to do […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:26 pm, November 15th, 2007 - 21 comments
The Business Roundtable has invited Nigel Lawson, British Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher, to speak to them on climate change. Inevitably, Lawson is a climate change denier. His message is that climate change is a replacement for communism and mainstream religion. He says people who are concerned about climate change are ‘eco-fundamentalists’ and ‘climate […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:22 am, November 14th, 2007 - 3 comments
The BBC has a good roundup of the top 10 climate change denier arguments with rebuttals from scientists who agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: that it’s happening, it’s due to us, and the potential damage is serious. Worthwhile reading for those who still find themselves in these kinds of arguments in the […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:35 pm, October 24th, 2007 - 20 comments
The NZ Institute needs to look a bit more closely before leaping into print. The strangest thing about its exhortation that NZ should be a climate change ‘fast follower’ is that is precisely the position we’re in right now. The government has announced its emissions trading scheme. It will be fully up and running by […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, October 24th, 2007 - 4 comments
Lights Out San Francisco is a citywide energy conservation event next scheduled for March 29, 2008. On this night, they invite the entire city of San Francisco to install one compact fluorescent light bulb and turn off all non-essential lighting for one hour. Below are a couple of shots from the event run four days […]
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