Latest articles on climate action
1.5° locked-and-loaded and looking down the barrel at >2°
Motorway extension all right for some
Submissions on the proposed Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway close today. Unless the submission is from the pro– Pūhoi access group that met with the New Zealand Transport Agency Friday, which has until 16 August. The agency’s Amanda…
Marvelous place to stop the motorway
It may be a case of joining the wrong dots. Or even a case of joining dots that aren’t there. But the spectre of a motorway snaking up Mahurangi Harbour, to the east of Schedewys Hill, Windy Ridge and Pōhuehue, is threatening to swamp reaction to the potential loss of...
Regional council’s informal position
The Auckland Regional Council respects and commends the NZ Transport Agency’s concern over growth pressures arising from transport infrastructure, and the need to reinforce and recognize the regional growth strategy etc as signalled in the regional policy statement....
Mahurangi may need to take one for the team
It is clearly working. Expectations for increased property demand at Mahurangi West have been dashed. In line with the growth objectives of the district and regional plans, the NZ Transport Agency signalled that there would be no access to the planned motorway between...
Motorway: Think on
The agency has said what it thinks. Headed ‘What we think’, the New Zealand Transport Agency a month ago outlined its broad plans for a Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway, and invited feedback. Since then, the Mahurangi Magazine has published seven pieces on the proposed...
Fossil-fuel solutions stratospheric cost
‘Sofia’ has cost $1.3 billion. If built, the Pūhoi–Wellsford Motorway is estimated to cost $2.3 billion. Nine years behind schedule, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy has just begun studying the atmospheres of other planets, when the extreme...
Thinking a little beyond 26 July
The motorway consultation process is generating considerable debate in the area. Communities, understandably, are currently focused on what can be done between now and 26 July to influence those making decisions about the design of the proposed Pūhoi–Wellsford...
Never negotiate out of fear; never fear to negotiate
The raison d'être for this publication is the Mahurangi landscape. More specifically, the Mahurangi Magazine’s mission has been to help ensure that recognition of the harbourscape was a principal part of the Mahurangi Action Plan. And it is, although it appeared...
Smarter agency models gagging for it
The New Zealand Transport Agency must be immensely bemused. A community reacts in outrage to the prospect of being denied direct access to a proposed motorway, when it should be erupting in righteous indignation at the absurdity of…
Alternatives to the agency model
Predictably, all the ruckus is over the off and on ramps. An entirely refreshing idea has been suggested by Mahurangi West man Cluny Macpherson. Professor Macpherson contends that bus bays should be provided opposite Pūhoi and Mahurangi West. This would facilitate...
Planning for the new coast road
For most of its 4.5 billion years, Planet Earth has been ice-sheet-free. Ice ages, on the whole, have been kind to humanity. The last interglacial has heralded the era in which humans have prospered, and built civilisation after civilisation. But there’s…
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…
Mahurangi Harbour might dodge another bullet
Mahurangi’s first near miss was being by-passed by the Great North Road. To avoid being bogged down, early road builders preferred, where possible, keep to the high ground. By electing to run the highway along the Windy Ridge, the harbour was put just out of sight of...
Fossil fuel addiction Gulf of denial
Fully one-third of the Oval Office speech is about America’s addiction to fossil fuels. But while that is undeniably courageous, given the unforgiving mood of the wounded United States electorate, the reasons that President Barack Obama gives for that addiction being...
Global warming too late to stop now
The reality is slowly dawning. Everything that made the timely warnings difficult to accept, now makes it impossible not to. The awe personified in the prayer ‘my boat is so small and your sea is so wide’ made preposterous the notion that…