Climate strategy – every action a climate action
Humanity hasn’t time to solve one problem at a time
stv supercity shake-up, then Wellington
Mayor Goff was elected by barely 18% of registered voters. Len Brown at least, won 47.8% of votes cast, but only because voters were then still in the dark about his grubby use of Auckland Council property. But the bigger crime of both men, and of the Royal…
Last call for climate action commission
Dr Jan Wright’s last report is also her least likely to ruffle feathers. Until now, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s refreshingly evidence-based reports have probably unsettled more Green Party supporters than the balance of…
Heart-shaped ballot boxes and Kombi combo fails to fire
Tessa Berger is quoted, but not by name. In his New Zealand Herald column Political Roundup, Dr Bryce Edwards names neither Tessa, nor the national Kids Voting programme she champions. Dr Edwards suggests local government is headed towards an…
Loose affiliation of billionaires and moratorium babies
Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a lot of unwelcome attention. They are bearing the brunt of the Guardian’s otherwise well-meaning fossil-fuels divestment campaign. To paint Bill and Melinda Gates the face of divestment reluctance is a bit rich. For starters…
Global climate action party brainstorming breakfast
Counting its Values Party roots, after 42 years it has only a few thousand members. If the Green Party’s membership, and its 10.7% electoral support, were an indication of how seriously New Zealanders view anthropogenic global warming…
Breakfast brainstorming on the next bit
What John Clarke said of the neoliberal de-democratisation of Aotearoa, in the New Zealand Listener, could equally be said of fossil-fuel use: “Complaining about what’s wrong but not taking action, has the same effect as not noticing what’s wrong…”
Can’t afford to solve one problem at a time
When the Alpine Fault goes, it will probably take Wellington with it. Wellington, now Aotearoa’s second largest city, is staring down the barrel of the Alpine Fault, which is primed and due to jump eight metres horizontally and four vertically. In both 1220 and 1450…
Incalculable celebrity of being the 1 generation in 40 million
Chances, overall, were nominally 1 in 40.01 million. The chances, that is, of being the generation that held the key to the survival of 40 million generations of human beings. Earth has existed for 4.54 billion years. Optimistically, the planet will…
Survival in the hands of generation 10 001
Sustainability could be the death of us. Bursting beyond the seven billion milestone, and with two billion poor and one billion poor and hungry, the global population is projected to swell to between 10 and 16 billion by the end of the century. In 2011, human…
Global warming mobilisation and 21st century Liberty ships
As a metaphor, the rms Titanic eclipses the First World War. In turn, World War One eclipses the 1918 Pandemic, which claimed possibly six times as many lives than ‘the war to end war’. The classic Titanic message is that the world’s largest ship, hyped as…
Planet doomed but save the sea and sky
The phrase ‘save the planet’ grates for good reason. Nothing that humankind can currently throw at it, greenhouse gases included, can affect the existence of planet Earth. Even if every nuclear weapon were detonated simultaneously for good…
Long past time for precautionary principle
Dr James Hansen’s lecture is slated to start at 6.30 pm. Or, if Thursday’s event’s Facebook page is to be believed, 6 pm. In 1988 when Dr Hansen warned congress that anthropogenic greenhouse gases were going to seriously raise average global temperatures, the...
Think Mahurangi action act global
Every catchment issue is set to become more acute, despite the best intentions of the Mahurangi Action Plan. Stormier weather will wash ever more soil into the harbour, and higher tides will more vigorously churn and muddy its soft shoreline. Thanks, in…
Political courage not political suicide
It was widely hyped as last chance for planet Earth. Then universally condemned as an abject failure. But the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen a year ago was neither of those things. And what it did produce, thanks to Barrack Obama, was the...
Yes-we-can clean energy ministerial
The green stars of the show are set to be the Arabs and the Koreans. South Korea is spending a greater percentage of its economic recovery stimulus on green initiatives than any country in the world. And the United Arab Emirates is investing heavily…
Atmospheric cost of printed telephone numbers
Updated 30 July 2011 The Sunday papers had arrived. As had the staggering bulk of the new Sydney telephone directories. The editor’s host lamented the bulk of the papers, and the contrasting lack of content: They’re all conjecture—I’m sure they print them on Tuesday....