Latest articles on climate action
1.5° locked-and-loaded and looking down the barrel at >2°
Part 1 China and the Barbarians
Republished from original PDF I was in China when United States midterm elections caused some people to become more pessimistic about the fate of the planet and humanity. In contrast, I became more optimistic, for two reasons, both related to China. Here I explain the...
Future of Aotearoa is nuclear visits
Blanket-banned for nearly all the right reasons. In 1984, when nuclear warships were banned from visiting Aotearoa, the French military was to continue testing nuclear weapons beneath Moruroa and Fangatafoa for more than 11 years. And the…
Google and the Shweeb sounds of success
The first section would run to the Wilson Cement Works. In time, it could run between Snells Beach and the Mahurangi College. And then form a coastal ‘walkway’ from Waiwera to Warkworth. Largely unnoticed by New Zealanders, the Shweeb is set to…
Redeeming the once-was-smart grid
Once, it was internationally award-winning. Specifically, New Zealand’s national electricity grid was feted for its sophisticated wireless telecommunications control system that facilitated load balancing and real time response to operational…
Bridging energy chasm the Ayres rock
Most are utterly unrepentant. Free-market high priests appear more than happy for the subprime mortgage market to take the fall for the global economic downturn—all those folk with no business aspiring to home ownership, really! Other economists…
Other than motorway, what $2.3 billion buys
China has 3529 kilometres in use and another 6696 under construction. High-speed rail in Japan, however, with its similarly challenging terrain is probably a better guide for Aotearoa. But even at the relatively high Japanese rates, the cost…
Marcus Shipton says give nuclear a chance
I am not here to convince you Aotearoa needs nuclear power. I honestly don’t know the answer to that question, however I am convinced that the world needs it. The real reason I’m here is to urge you to challenge our dogma, in these challenging…
Ramp renewables but energy efficiency first
It doesn’t seem cheap. Filling the tank seems to cost a prince’s ransom, particularly for older folk who can remember doing it prior to the first oil shock. For a decade before 1973, four dollars would fill the tank of a Mini. But the oil shocks to date are nothing to...
Goodbye old motorway, hello new rail
It was an entirely reasonable expectation. That the best features of the constituent local bodies would be melded into the new region‑wide council. Len Brown’s announcement that he would “take onboard the Waitakere eco‑city concept” may…
Climate court-action is delaying the inevitable
Nobody should be above the law. Such platitudes will resonate with folk who welcome the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition’s latest bid to be noticed: Taking legal action against the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, in the name of the New...
Safety first trumps weak economics
A good deal of sense was talked in Auckland and Wellington yesterday. Auckland Regional Council listened to two options that put safety first, in quickly and affordably upgrading the dangerous highway between Pūhoi and Wellsford motorway, presented…
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...
Mainstream media missing from wild new frontiers
As threats go, they don’t come much bigger. Asteroid collision, global thermonuclear war, nuclear winter, snowball earth all have the potential to render Homo sapiens sapiens extinct. But these threats have either a low, in some cases infinitesimally low…
On the bus for thorium-powered future
It was a sobering statement. There’s not enough power available to electrify Auckland’s transport. Gary Heaven knows a lot about such things, given that much of his information technology work is for power utilities. The immediate discussion…
Magazine urges agency to build for future
The following submission is that of the Mahurangi Magazine, prepared by Cimino Cole, editor, with the support of John Timmins, publisher. The magazine thanks its many readers who have expressed support for the need to protect the harbourscape, and…