Latest articles on climate action
1.5° locked-and-loaded and looking down the barrel at >2°
Mahurangi Action motorway condition 36c viii
It’s not, in fact, the harbour’s biggest threat since deforestation. The proposed Pūhoi–Warkworth motorway is only the biggest proximate threat. The biggest threat of course—the existential threat—is rampant global warming. The entire litany of…
Renewable energy, nuclear power and Galileo
Climate scientists have long warned of potential catastrophic effects of unchecked fossil fuel use. Public awareness of the climate threat has increased. Yet growth of carbon dioxide in the air, the main driver of climate change, has accelerated…
Mahurangi headwaters estimated not measured
In a straight line, the stream would run from Mahurangi to Palmerston North. That is, if all the streams in the Mahurangi catchment were laid end-to-end, and assuming, of course, that there was sufficient head to cause this hypothetical stream to run. Then…
Mahurangi Harbour urgently needs to sign her friends
Paid-up ‘friends’ of the Mahurangi once numbered 300—on the back of the launch of Jade River: A History of the Mahurangi. The society titled Friends of the Mahurangi, now Mahurangi Action Incorporated, published Ronald Harry Locker’s masterly 416-page work in…
Motorway harbour’s biggest threat since deforestation
Clearly, something has to be done. State Highway 1 between Pūhoi and Wellsford is lethal, and at times congested. In 2010, the Campaign for Better Transport in its Operation Lifesaver document came up with two options, either of which, by now…
Coast clear for Labour as the climate action party
Aotearoa’s major political parties share a broadly similar stance on anthropogenic global warming. In contrast, climate action in Australia and the United States is a deeply partisan business. The ‘invisible substance’ reference of Liberal Party leader and prime...
Fossil fuel fuse and the mother of all unintended consequences
It happened somewhere between the mastery of fire a million and a half years ago, and today’s rampant exploitation of fossil fuel reserves. Practiced judiciously, and to jumpstart sustainable energy technologies, and by a sustainable population, the burning of a...
Not just century, warming moral issue of millennium
More mud, fewer oysters, and galloping foreshore erosion. This is the forlorn future faced by the Mahurangi Harbour. Just how muddy, how few oysters or fish, and how quickly higher and higher tides carve into soft unprotected shorelines depends…
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…
4 or 40 years late climate thrust to front page
George Monbiot declared 28 August 2012 as the day world went mad. Writing on the following day, the Guardian’s respected environmental journalist asked readers to remember that date. It was the day that scientists announced the record Arctic ice melt, unnoticed…
‘Essentially a technical problem’ – City ’s technocrats rejected rail
Since 1999, New Zealand’s tourism board has marketed the country as ‘100% Pure New Zealand’. The campaign draws on the country’s scenic beauty, displayed to the world in the Lord of the Rings movies, and a reputation for environmental activism dating back to 1970s campaigns…
New unitary authority not going to plan
Len’s in danger of loosing it. As was all too apparent halfway through the term of Aotearoa’s first mayoral office to enjoy significant executive powers, Mayor Brown has bet the farm on a project for which he has little to show, come local body election year. Had...
World’s worst-polluting pair of superpowers work on climate
Amidst a rash of high-profile setbacks, he’s just played a blinder. What little remained of President Barack Obama’s gun control legislation has been unceremoniously buried by the gun manufacturers, in cold-blooded disregard for the funerals for…
Sole shot at salvation calls for youth to withhold labour
The Green Party doesn’t understand anthropogenic global warming: “…we can expect droughts to be more extreme and strike more often if we don’t take global action.” Never mind if—droughts will be more extreme and will strike more often, they…
Unprecedented struggle yet story with no name
For two decades it was the Great War. Then, with the outbreak of World War II, it became the First World War. As a descriptive title, First World War says a great deal more than Great War. It would be even more descriptive, but less eloquent, as the First...