Latest articles on climate action
1.5° locked-and-loaded and looking down the barrel at >2°
High time to ramp up response
Blame it on that unabashed alarmist, Noah. For establishing the notion that humanity could be wilfully drowned and a fresh start would only be few months in an ark away. The sad fact is that not all the animals can be saved. Sure, the likes of the lions and…
Twin Streams floated their punt
Project Twin Streams features in the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance recommendations, and that is a promising sign for the Mahurangi. The 788-page report, which is eminently readable, is peppered with examples that…
Sustainable energy without the hot air
Bill Gates puts it as well as anyone: “If someone wants an overall view of how energy gets used, where it comes from, and the challenges in switching to new sources, this is the book to read.” Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air was written by physicist…
Well-spotted that big riverboat wheel
Master mariner Melvyn Bowen warmed up his audience with a quiz: ”Where am I?” he asked of the dozen or so who turned out on Friday evening to hear from the commercial sail aficionado. The first image of the presentation was of Melvyn stood…
Commercial sail – the way it could be
After thousands of years powered by sail, commercial navigation switched over completely to fossil fuels. Since then, the revival of commercial sail has proved to be a curiously elusive goal. But the same reason electric cars are making a stampeding…
Meeting to form Transition Town Warkworth
No doubt you are aware of climate change. Maybe you have heard of peak oil. But what can you do? Peak oil and climate change will drastically change the way we live. Food, transport and energy costs are predicted to soar. Weather patterns…
Preventing climate confusion raining
Regular readers will be aware that my goal of a new page published every day has gone up in CO2. The reason is that I have an additional job, as a subeditor for Fairfax Media. Taking up a new job at 61 years has proved to be both exhilarating and exhausting. Some…
Low impact design that’s got to (be) smart
In a perfect world, economic drivers would be indistinguishable from environmental drivers. Readers of the Mahurangi Magazine will no doubt range from climate-change sceptics, all the way through to those in the we’re-already-dog-tucker…
The good news on good-news carbon
Tuesday’s Rodney Times carried an article that had Friends of the Mahurangi executive member Mike Neil highly encouraged: ‘Some good news on carbon, at last!’ Had I seen it? No, but I needed little excuse to put off completing some long-overdue administration chores...
Some capping and trading but an electric redemption
This piece was going to be titled: Too Little, Too Slowly—Pray it’s Not Too Late. But then it would have been doing the Labour government’s announcement on climate action a huge disservice. And it wouldn’t be doing any better than the New…
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....
Climate and the economy when green turns to grey
Everything that began with Marx, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, 1917 and all that, petered out. Even World War II became just history. The choice facing western Europeans was no longer one of capitalism or…
Grasp opportunity for Climate Action Party of Aotearoa
A green economy won’t ward off an unsurvivable climate. In fairness, there is no longer any guarantee that it’s not already too late for any human intervention to prevent the onset of Hothouse Earth. Every additional day wasted increases the chance that…