John Key’s crony-capitalist, neoliberal government is failing NZ on the environment, affordable housing, and a living wage. Mana and the Greens are leading the way on affordable housing and anti-poverty campaigns. The Greens still lead the way on pressing environmental issues.
Unemployment at record highs, current account deficit in trouble, the economy is stagnant, exodus to Australia, National is failing by every performance measure that they set themselves. The completely frustrating thing is that there is a clear and rational way forward, if only we have the wisdom to take it.
John Key doesn’t want NZ to be a leader in the fight against climate change. Much better to be a lemming (sorry – a “fast follower”) and follow all the other lemmings off the cliff.
While the professional mainstream media were all chanting in unison that the American presidential election was “too close to call”, one (famous!) blogger correctly predicted the result – for every state.
Voting starts. What will the new president do about Climate Change? For good or ill, America has a tradition of global leadership. When it comes to climate change America needs to lead more actively in the world – not from behind, but from the front. Will Obama be that president? Will Romney? Or will we have to wait another four more terrible years of rudderless inaction?
My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: inequality, language on social media, and feminism.
On the back of Duncan Garner’s scathing piece on David Shearer, David Farrar endorses Grant Robertson for leader. Yeah, because his last recommendation’s worked out so well. Call me cynical, but I just don’t think National’s pollster has the Left’s interests at heart. No, I don’t think people will be looking to the Right for advice on who should lead Labour again.
If any good can ever be said to come from a natural disaster, then let the good of Sandy be its function as a clear and present wake up call. It’s a crisis, and it’s an opportunity.
Bugger the environment – who needs it? That’s the message from National, both domestically and internationally.
On Planet Key natural body processes are ignored, and nature has been tamed into a golf course. It’s a place where mothers don’t lactate or have a heightened sensitivity to their babies’ cries; a place disconnected from the chaotic consequences of climate change.
The Maori Party has pulled its support for the latest weakening of the ETS. As usual Peter Dunne will be personally responsible for propping up the worst of the Nats’ agenda.
Another report confirms the findings of the 2006 Stern Report. The future economic costs of doing nothing far outweigh the current costs of taking action on climate change. But National is taking us backwards…
With proposed ETS changes National is abdicating our responsibility on the world stage, and sending the bill to the taxpayers. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment calls it ‘a farce’. It’s cowardly, it’s weak, and it’s shafting the working Kiwi.
So the government is announcing the “lifetime cost” of social welfare payments today to soften the ground for cracking down on beneficiaries.
By coincidence they’re also in the process of rushing through changes to the emissions trading scheme that will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars in corporate welfare.
There are perfectly good reasons that NZ as a country should remain GM free. And we should stand up and say so in the face of inept and blatant lobbying from the GM industry.
Planning permission has been sought to construct the world’s largest windfarm off the Scottish coast. Estimated to cost around 4.5 billion pounds and […]
Like many people I’m always bemused by the lack of logic that the climate change deniers (CCD’s) have in their extremely selective picking of things to get wound up about – especially about climate models. But when an actual self-evident flaw shows up in the models, well they simply seem to miss it entirely. Like it is now evident that the climate models used to predict Arctic melting vastly underrate the speed at which it is happening. The consequences are going to be unpleasant for the north.
At around 5:30pm this evening Curiosity will either touch down safely on Mars, or make (another) expensive smudge on the surface. Various links below – tune in. Good luck Curiosity…
There aren’t many climate skeptics whose opinions can be affected by mere evidence, so hats off to Richard Muller.
My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: hiding tax, growing up neo-liberal and Syria.
Could we be about to have our very own Scopes trial? In that famous Tennessee Court Case, the State prosecuted a teacher for teaching evolution. He walked free and it was a decisive moment in mainstreaming evolution and making the creationists the crackpots. Now, the climate change deniers are suing NIWA and their loss will be a dagger through the heart of denialism.
Climate change is causing the world’s temperatures and seas levels to rise but this isn’t a steady process. Instead we see more frequent and more extreme weather events. The record-busting heatwave in the US and floods in Russia are examples. The big problem is the effects of these weather events on our production of food and other vital goods.
The oceans are doing their best to save us from climate change apparently… but just ending up dooming us in another way.
Tim Groser: “Our farmers have been reducing their emissions by 1.3% per year for two decades” (that’s emissions per unit of output, btw, not absolute – although total agriculture emissions are down in recent years). Groser on why farming should be out of the ETS: “we’ll introduce biological emissions into the ETS when we think there credible abatement technologies out there.”
I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: Work, American Lies and Science.
Well said. What a tragedy that they heard, but did not listen.
Yesterday National pollster David Farrar excitedly quoted from a George Monbiot article saying peak oil isn’t happening. Two problems: 1) Farrar omitted to quote the bits of the article saying that the flipside of no peak oil would be runaway climate change. 2) the report Monbiot’s article is based on is written by an oil executive who claims we’ll stumble on endless cheap oil and all live happily ever after.
Tim Groser in the NBR: “Our enemies who are internal, will find one cow in one stream and feed it back to environmental activists in the developed world to be used to try to exclude New Zealand’s products and services in the ludicrous belief this will somehow help New Zealand.” Paranoid, much? And don’t you think the polluters are the problem, not the people who fail to hush it up?
As many of us expected, National has no intention of ever enforcing the ETS in the area where it makes the most difference to NZ emissions – agriculture.
The Exxon Mobil CEO now acknowledges that the world is warming, but claims that there will be an “engineering solution”. This glib reassurance is simply the next phase of Exxon’s well funded and carefully planned denier tactics.
How do we move forward from here? How do we get the consensus we need? How do we get more politicians around the world making not just speeches like David Cunliffe’s, but acting on them? Setting the targets and the plan behind them to avoid the brutal logic of climate change.
“Markets have become increasingly concerned that the austerity programmes in the eurozone are causing a vicious circle of recession”, and “Markets were confused by mixed messages from European capitals”. I have only one word of reply: Bollocks. Did anyone phone me to ask how I, The Markets, was feeling about these subjects? Did they hell!
A draft agreement has been negotiated for the Rio+20 summit that starts today, but anyone who cares about the future of our planet should be disappointed. The expert panel of nobel laureates, scientists and ministers’ call to ‘seize the moment’ has largely gone unheeded, as the agreement is full of empty promises and lacking in concrete commitments.
Two major new reports out yesterday (from the UN and in Nature) show the earth is headed for a tipping point: our consumption is unsustainable, and we’re degrading the environment. Soon it will be beyond the point of return.
