What if… Dunedin no longer needed so much petrol?
It’s 2032, and we’re looking back at a decade of oil, climate and economic crisis, and how one city found a way through.
Environment
science
The approaching fuel crisis: what if we no longer needed so much petrol?
What would our society, communities and lives look like in New Zealand if we weren’t so reliant on fossil fuels?
Luxon’s strange Public Transport take
Yesterday Chris Luxon showed the sensitivity and sophistication of someone who owns seven properties and at one stage had 6.1 million Air New Zealand shares by stating that he believed that at least some public transport services should not be supported and that public transport needs to stand on its own feet.
Plant based foods
Worrying news has emerged that New Zealand officials sought along with other agricultural nations to remove references to the benefits of consuming plant based foods on climate change from the IPCC report summary.
Climate Action Mondays: after the IPCC report, what now?
It’s time to act as if our lives depend on it.
Last chance to see or finally acting as if our lives depend on it?
That IPCC report telling it like it is. Ball is in our court.
Climate Action Mondays: slow fashion
It’s time to act as if our lives depend on it. Here are the things we can do and we can require government and business to do.
Climate Action Mondays Tuesday
It’s time to act as if our lives depend on it.
Crisis, What Crisis?
There is only so much New Zealand and its government can do to soften the blows of the instability that are besetting the world. And the problem is without dramatic change New Zealand will remain one of the most car-addicted, petrol reliant societies on earth for several decades to come.
Climate Action Mondays
It’s time to act as if our lives depend on it.
The difference between Labour and National
There has been the occasional criticism of Labour for not achieving enough progressive change by people who then propose supporting National. What are they thinking?
Pick a side
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelinsky has made a direct appeal broadcast to the United States Congress. That will sort out the Putin supporters from the rest. And with climate change beckoning it is time to pick a side.
The empire strikes back
Labour’s announcement of a temporary reduction in fuel excise duties and a halving of public transport fares ups the ante on the debate on how to alleviate hardship caused by overseas induced inflation.
Two years of living dangerously
Yesterday marked the second anniversary of the first Covid case in New Zealand. What a time it has been.
Dennis Meadows on the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth – Post Carbon Institute
Only rarely does a book truly change the world. In the nineteenth century, such a book was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. For the twentieth century, it was The Limits to Growth.
Free public transport for Auckland is a very good idea
Efeso Collins has announced his first Mayoral campaign policy and it is a biggie, free public transport for Auckland.
Everyone is over Covid
Jacinda Ardern said yesterday that everyone is over Covid. She is right. We all want this to end.
The long cost of Covid-19
There has been a depressing large study published looking at the medical risks of having covid-19 on the cardiovascular systems in Nature Medicine. The news isn’t good. Having Covid-19 increases the risks of a range of cardiovascular diseases from heart failure to strokes over a year. It does it across all demographics.
Can this government get re-elected?
Where will the votes come from to get Labour a third term?
Chloe Swarbrick Needs A Reset
Chloe Swarbrick has requested that the government help Auckland central’s restaurants. But in a post Covid pre climate change world this is not going to help.
Prime Minister Ardern on Climate Change and the economy
The full text is worth perusing across multiple areas, but Prime Minister Ardern’s speech in Parliament yesterday gave useful hints about how the economy and climate change are being integrated into a single economic strategy.
And what have they done anyway?
With Ardern getting a good-old media beat-down, remember here’s how to change a country for good like no one else but Labour can.
The Department of Earthly Gifts
Where western minds are busy arguing if indigenous knowledge is science, botanist and first nations woman Robin Wall Kimmerer exemplifies how to do both at the same time.
Australia’s Omicron problem
With over 61,000 new Covid cases reported yesterday Australia is in the midst of an infection surge that it has not seen before. What lessons can New Zealand learn from Australia’s handling of the pandemic?
New Year. Good News.
This one goes out to all those good people running round like their hair’s on fire.
Hope Punk 2022
Here’s a kind of map to a future where things work out.
A few random predictions for 2022
A few random predictions for 2022.
Our Energy Upheaval
Ministers Wood, Shaw and Parker (Energy, Climate Change, and RMA reform respectively), must pull their eyes downward from the misty clouds of climate change and stuff multiple decades away and down into the jagged, shadowy deal-by-deal path of the transition to clean energy.
Can Labor Win Australia Back?
Coming up surprising quickly in 2022 is the Australian federal election – and Labor has a good shot.
He Waka Eke Noa?
While a core of farmers protested a few days ago against farm environmental regulation with long lines of tractors, the organised form of agribusiness, Maori and government working together have concluded that making a climate different isn’t possible.
COP26 Results
The deal is done. Together with lots of side-agreements, big-up pledges, finance, and no definite language the phasing out of Coal or fossil fuel subsidies.
New Zealand’s New Low Carbon Economy Stays Difficult
Southland Mayor Gary Tong has justified felling a forest to construct a coal mine by saying “[w]e all want to make a cleaner, greener planet, but we can’t do it in five minutes.”
The Rules To Save The World
Beyond the NGO emotion and singing and joyous arm waving, country leaders at COP 26 actually have to achieve stuff this week.
Alt COP26: “Get in line or get out of the way”
Climate solutions are coming from Indigenous peoples and other system thinkers who are deeply connected with nature, not the neoliberal diehards who treat nature as a grab bag of resources to be manipulated.
COP26 is on
The show is now on for Conference of Parties 26 (COP 26), where countries show each other how they will achieve the Paris […]
The Entrust election debacle
National aligned C&R has shown how bad it is at running elections by running an election where less than one in ten eligible people voted.