Latest articles on climate action
1.5° locked-and-loaded and looking down the barrel at >2°
Years of living dangerously leave beaches forlorn future
In the last year, the tide of public opinion has turned. Americans now largely accept global warming as a clear and present danger, largely as a result of the record-breaking drought that is affecting most of the United States. A record minimum Arctic…
Fourth-estate help to forget everything
By its very definition, global warming is a world issue. Global warming is also, inescapably, the world issue—the only one on track to take and to shorten billions of lives, and the only with the potential to extinguish life worldwide. Yet the New Zealand Herald’s new...
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…
Arguable beginning but Anthropocene definitely here
Cold has forever staked humanity. The Ice Age—or more formally, the Pleistocene glaciation—began 2.58 million years ago, and genus Homo just a whisker after that. Ostensibly, the Ice Age is ongoing, and the present interglacial period, during which…
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…
Only way forward for Labour seriously green
Green Party energy spokesman Gareth Hughes describes it as unhelpful. But when the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment finds that subsidising smart meters would make a significant contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, in…
Manifest evidence suggests science not an option
When Professor Sir Peter Gluckman recommends a title with such seemingly marginal appeal as The Geek Manifesto, it’s a sure bet rather more New Zealanders will be inclined to give the book a second glance than would otherwise have been the…
Urgent need for nonpartisan Brown transport plan
There are mandates, and mandates. The mandate fairly claimed by the newly created Auckland Council’s inaugural mayor, Len Brown, was for building the city rail link. However, since Len Brown’s election, a National-led government has been…
Mahurangi Magazine illustrates the dolphin and the dole queue
Hon David Cunliffe Member of Parliament for New Lynn Labour Party economic development and associate finance spokesman Clean-tech cluster chairman Titirangi War Memorial Hall 23 June 2012 Since I became a father, everything I did before seems rather shallow and...
Another speech spiked of another true patriot
It is clearly not working. Oil still flows thickly and the Earth disgorges myriad other minerals in unprecedented abundance, yet the wheels have fallen off the global economy—unemployment and underemployment are at record highs. Global oil…
Sea-level rise deregulated and developer-friendly
Water finds its own level. Or at least that is the received, and generally entirely useful, wisdom. Water in a hose, for example, can make a useful builder’s level. However, as anyone who has actually attempted to use one will likely attest, the odd bubble…
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…
Mahurangi Magazine reprints the New Lynn speech
You know that at the last election, the one that we lost so badly, nearly one million people didn’t vote; more than 800 000 people—a fifth of the population—didn’t vote. Now you know, there are lots of reasons that people didn’t vote, and there were…
Democracy leadership and small islands visions
The ex-president of the Maldives is seeking to make sea-level rise a presidential election issue. Forced out of office at gunpoint in February, Mohamed Nasheed is in the United States promoting the documentary The Island President. On the…
Vision of being world’s best at everything
It should have happened overnight. Dr Gareth Morgan’s Million-Dollar Mouse campaign deserved to have been over-subscribed by lunchtime the next day. After all, the philanthropist is matching contributions dollar for dollar, and so is only seeking $350 000—the...