A Confession.
Written By:
- Date published:
5:10 am, June 7th, 2019 - 174 comments
Categories: Environment, global warming, Politics, science -
Tags: climate emergency, deep stuff, global warming
A few years back Joe Bennett wrote a book Where Underpants Come From where he shared quirky observations and experiences of his travels to places involved in the manufacture of his underwear. I’ve lost the book, so can’t give a precise run-down of the countries he visited. But whether we’re accurately talking about Malaysia for rubber, Egypt for cotton, and China for fabrication, the point is that every node of production involves a hefty wad of carbon – be that in harvesting materials, processing materials or shipping them.
So as I sit here today, I’m well aware that these underpants I’m wearing contain carbon over and above whatever amount is present in 80kg of middle age spread. And apart from knowing that’s probably a bad image I’ve conjured up for you, I’m also aware that “going commando” won’t save the world – that the root cause of warming doesn’t lie at the level of individuals as consumers, but at a systems or structural level.
But the ideology that sits beneath and behind the structures and systems that bundle us up as complicit actors in an unfolding ecocide – who or what’s halting it in its tracks?
There is somewhere approaching one trillion tonnes of excess carbon dioxide in the biosphere today. That one trillion tonnes translates to an atmospheric concentration of CO2 that’s somewhere around 410 parts per million.
I want to draw attention to the fact we’re talking about excess – ie, carbon that was previously sequestered in the form of coal, gas and oil, but that we’ve been merrily burning back into the biosphere as carbon dioxide by-product. That excess has been accumulating since at least the mid 19th century. That is, carbon dioxide ejected into the air in 1850 is still in the atmosphere today, or mixed into some other part the carbon cycle and merely circulating around the land, sea and air. Very little of all the carbon we’ve reintroduced to the biosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution has actually been sequestered (ie – taken out of circulation). That takes thousands of years.
So I get frustrated when I hear demands for net zero carbon emissions by whatever date, because net zero does precisely nothing to reduce the trillion tonnes of excess carbon dioxide we’ve flung at the world. At very best – that is, assuming no natural feed backs and no scamming in the calculation of so-called carbon sinks – net zero will merely maintain the world’s excess carbon at present levels.
And this is some of what nigh on one trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide (or 410ppm) means for the world.
Last time there was as much carbon dioxide as today, there was no West Antarctic Ice Sheet and there was no ice in Greenland either. Between the collapse of those two bodies of ice, we’re looking at many metres of sea level rise. And the only question is –
“How fast will they collapse?”.
Well, a couple of years back the IPCC was suggesting we prepare for about one metre of sea level rise by 2100. It’s important to know that in making that prediction the IPCC more or less discounted any contribution to sea level rise from either West Antarctica or Greenland (and East Antarctica).
Recent reports that parts of Antarctica (ice shelves) are melting up to ten times faster than previously thought are adding to suggestions from within the scientific community are that we might see one metre of sea level rise well before 2100. And if you think that’s a big deal merely because of the unimaginable upheavals involved in relocating much of human civilisation away from coastal locations, then I’m afraid you’re not seeing anything like the full picture.
According to Professor Peter Ward of the University of Washington, (from 32min and 25sec in the video link) we grow about 25% of our crops on the fertile soils of river deltas. With something not much more than one metre of sea level rise, those deltas disappear under water or, because salt migrates through soil horizontally, they become salinated and unusable.
And beyond that, things get pretty bad.
Ever wondered why, when we’re told about the huge drop in insect numbers, that those numbers are reported to be dropping whether or not insecticides are in the mix, or if habitat is intact? Lewis Ziska (Plant Physiologist working at the US Department of Agriculture) conducted a study around the effects of elevated CO2 levels on the composition of plants that was published in 2016.
He discovered that nutritional value decreased in line with increasing CO2 concentrations. For that study he examined samples of goldenrod going back as far as 1842 and he concluded plants were no longer producing the nutritional density required by healthy insect populations. (His study involved bee populations). That finding was in line with a previous experiment where the growth rate of phytoplankton was accelerated with the notion being that zoo plankton would thrive in the presence of a more abundant food source. The notion was misplaced. In the event, zoo plankton struggled and died off because, by growing it faster, a nutritional deficit was produced in the phytoplankton.
Further to the above, Fulai Liu from the University of Copenhagen has headed up field trials for wheat where “they grew wheat over four generations under high CO2 using seeds from the previous generation for the next one. They found that nitrogen (this means protein too), K and Ca declined more in the 4th gen relative to the 1st gen.”
Right now, and all around the world, we’re adding to the world’s surplus atmospheric CO2, so the nutritional value of plants hasn’t bottomed out yet. And even if we eradicated all CO2 from human activity today, Fulai Liu’s field trials suggest the nutritional value of our food would continue to decrease. So at what point would the health of herbivores and humans become impacted? I don’t know. But scientists are already talking about the possibility of increased rates of malnutrition, associated ill health and death for human populations that source the bulk of protein and trace elements directly from plants.
So where are we at in the overall scheme of things, and what do we have to do? Is there anything we can do? I don’t know.
But net zero is a nonsense, and we have to stop pretending it does much of anything at all – that would be step one. Being realistic. So how do we achieve gross negative emissions? I’m not sure that we can. But eradicating all emissions from fossil fuel and bio-fuel and cement is do-able and necessary. So we should do that.
I’ll largely leave it up to you to figure out the possible impacts that no petrol, diesel, gas, aviation fuel or coal would have on agriculture and land use in general.
Certainly, in a New Zealand context, we’d be looking at the end of export dairy – no thousands upon thousands of cows squeezed onto pasture that requires huge fossil inputs, all just to produce dairy, that in turn requires additional fossil inputs in terms of processing and transportation. And although rewilding farm land wouldn’t sequester CO2, it would soak up a bit more CO2 into one stage of the carbon cycle, and so rewilding of any abandoned agricultural land would appear to be a sensible move.
But beyond that, I’m lost.
As already mentioned, natural processes of sequestration take thousands of years, and although there is plenty of talk around carbon capture and storage, the reality is far more complicated and distant than some talk would have us believe. Even in the unlikely event we discover and develop a do-able carbon capture and storage process, we’d need to be taking somewhere in the region of 10 billion tonnes out from the atmosphere every year and for year after year for … well, about 100 years.
And to put that in perspective, if we add up everything that we produce in the world today over the course of one year – all the steel and cement and the food crops and what not…well, try it for yourself. Simply google search through various sites devoted to global manufacturing outputs. You’ll struggle to produce a cumulative total of ten billion tonnes.
It might seem then, that we’ve reached a point where we have a simple choice of either going out swinging, or of going out swinging. We’ll each decide which interpretation of swinging is right for us.
Regardless..
Having been along to the last two school climate strikes here in Dunedin, I have to say, I’d like it if the adults in the room would stop lying to these kids. We don’t have twelve years or ten years before catastrophe or irreversible climate change hits us. (No scientific body said that we did). Nothing’s bringing insects back. Nothing’s saving the ice sheets.
If today’s children even have a future, it’s not one that will in any way, shape or form resemble the lives of their parents or grandparents. We’ve seen to that.
But could we have the decency to be honest about that, and stop hobbling their ability to cope with what lies ahead by raising them and educating them as though the challenges ahead, as well as the tools they’ll need to develop, will be similar to those of previous generations?
Further to that, if we’re not prepared to pull out all the stops in an effort to at least halt the progression of global warming, then are we prepared to acknowledge that the people we see on the street today may well belong to the last generations of humanity?
Dismiss or answer those questions to your own satisfaction as you will.
Here’s an aside. Since the beginning of the school climate strikes, a few governments have declared a “climate emergency”. As we all know, in the case of an emergency, everything else becomes peripheral and drops out of focus “because emergency”, right? Meaning that, unless I missed something, those declarations amount to yet more worthless rhetoric being stacked atop that heap of near thirty years of worthless rhetoric on global warming.
Not that it matters…
Greta Thunberg is among those who have called for a global general strike to commence on the 20th of September this year. That call comes on top of another call by earth-strike for a global general strike to kick off on the 27th of September (the anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson‘s “Silent Spring”).
So we have a choice for when we might want to get our fingers out of our ears and start swinging.
I’ll end with Greta Thurnberg from the piece above.
We have learned that if we don’t start acting for our future, nobody else will make the first move. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
For that to be true, I guess it simply requires that we, underpants and all, acknowledge that we’re better than we’ve been. So spread the word.
174 comments on “A Confession. ”
- Comments are now closed
- Comments are now closed
Recent Comments
- Can taxpayers be confident PIJF cash was spent wisely?
Graham Adams writes about the $55m media fund — When Patrick Gower was asked by Mike Hosking last week what he would say to the many Newstalk ZB callers who allege the Labour government bribed media with $55 million of taxpayers’ money via the Public Interest Journalism Fund — and ...6 hours ago - EGU2024 – An intense week of joining sessions virtually
Note: this blog post has been put together over the course of the week I followed the happenings at the conference virtually. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in. ...8 hours ago - Submission on “Fast Track Approvals Bill”
The following was my submission made on the “Fast Track Approvals Bill”. This potential law will give three Ministers unchecked powers, un-paralled since the days of Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” projects.The submission is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. But it’s irreverent because the FTAB is in itself not worthy of respect. ...9 hours ago - The Case for a Universal Family Benefit
One Could Reduce Child Poverty At No Fiscal CostFollowing the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families have been added, the best known being ‘Working for Families’, introduced in 2005. ...10 hours ago - A who’s who of New Zealand’s dodgiest companies
Submissions on National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law are due today (have you submitted?), and just hours before they close, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop has been forced to release the list of companies he invited to apply. I've spent the last hour going through it in an epic thread of bleats, ...11 hours ago - On Lee’s watch, Economic Development seems to be stuck on scoring points from promoting sporting e...
Buzz from the Beehive A few days ago, Point of Order suggested the media must be musing “on why Melissa is mute”. Our article reported that people working in the beleaguered media industry have cause to yearn for a minister as busy as Melissa Lee’s ministerial colleagues and we drew ...12 hours ago - New Zealand has never been closed for business
1. What was The Curse of Jim Bolger?a. Winston Peters b. Soon after shaking his hand, world leaders would mysteriously lose office or shuffle off this mortal coilc. Could never shake off the Mother of All Budgetsd. Dandruff2. True or false? The Chairman of a Kiwi export business has asked the ...13 hours ago - Stop the panic – we’ve been here before
Jack Vowles writes – New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. ...16 hours ago - Melissa Lee and the media: ending the questChris Trotter writes – MELISSA LEE should be deprived of her ministerial warrant. Her handling – or non-handling – of the crisis engulfing the New Zealand news media has been woeful. The fate of New Zealand’s two linear television networks, a question which the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications ...17 hours ago
- The Hoon around the week to April 19TL;DR: The podcast above features co-hosts and , along with regular guests Robert Patman on Gaza and AUKUS II, and on climate change.The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the ...17 hours ago
- The ‘Humpty Dumpty’ end result of dismantling our environmental protectionsPolicymakers rarely wish to make plain or visible their desire to dismantle environmental policy, least of all to the young. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent ...18 hours ago
- Nicola's Salad Days.
I like to keep an eye on what’s happening in places like the UK, the US, and over the ditch with our good mates the Aussies. Let’s call them AUKUS, for want of a better collective term. More on that in a bit.It used to be, not long ago, that ...19 hours ago - Study sees climate change baking in 19% lower global income by 205019 hours ago
- Weekly Roundup 19-April-2024
It’s Friday again. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week on Greater Auckland On Tuesday Matt covered at the government looking into a long tunnel for Wellington. On Wednesday we ran a post from Oscar Simms on some lessons from Texas. AT’s ...20 hours ago - Jack Vowles: Stop the panic – we’ve been here before
New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. The data is from February this ...22 hours ago - Clearing up confusion (or trying to)
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is understood to be planning a major speech within the next fortnight to clear up the confusion over whether or not New Zealand might join the AUKUS submarine project. So far, there have been conflicting signals from the Government. RNZ reported the Prime Minister yesterday in ...23 hours ago - How to Retrieve Deleted Call Log iPhone Without Computer
How to Retrieve Deleted Call Log on iPhone Without a Computer: A Step–by–Step Guide Losing your iPhone call history can be frustrating, especially when you need to find a specific number or recall an important conversation. But before you panic, know that there are ways to retrieve deleted call logs on your iPhone, even without a computer. This guide will explore various methods, ranging from simple checks to utilizing iCloud backups and third–party applications. So, let‘s dive in and recover those lost calls! 1. Check Recently Deleted Folder: Apple understands that accidental deletions happen. That‘s why they introduced the “Recently Deleted“ folder for various apps, including the Phone app. This folder acts as a safety net, storing deleted call logs for up to 30 days before permanently erasing them. Here‘s how to check it: Open the Phone app on your iPhone. Tap on the “Recents“ tab at the bottom. Scroll to the top and tap on “Edit“. Select “Show Recently Deleted“. Browse the list to find the call logs you want to recover. Tap on the desired call log and choose “Recover“ to restore it to your call history. 2. Restore from iCloud Backup: If you regularly back up your iPhone to iCloud, you might be able to retrieve your deleted call log from a previous backup. However, keep in mind that this process will restore your entire phone to the state it was in at the time of the backup, potentially erasing any data added since then. Here‘s how to restore from an iCloud backup: Go to Settings > General > Reset. Choose “Erase All Content and Settings“. Follow the on–screen instructions. Your iPhone will restart and show the initial setup screen. Choose “Restore from iCloud Backup“ during the setup process. Select the relevant backup that contains your deleted call log. Wait for the restoration process to complete. 3. Explore Third–Party Apps (with Caution): ...1 day ago - How to Factory Reset iPhone without Computer: A Comprehensive Guide to Restoring your DeviceLife throws curveballs, and sometimes, those curveballs necessitate wiping your iPhone clean and starting anew. Whether you’re facing persistent software glitches, preparing to sell your device, or simply wanting a fresh start, knowing how to factory reset iPhone without a computer is a valuable skill. While using a computer with ...1 day ago
- How to Call Someone on a Computer: A Guide to Voice and Video Communication in the Digital AgeGone are the days when communication was limited to landline phones and physical proximity. Today, computers have become powerful tools for connecting with people across the globe through voice and video calls. But with a plethora of applications and methods available, how to call someone on a computer might seem ...1 day ago
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #16 2024Open access notables Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications: Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control ...1 day ago
- Where on a Computer is the Operating System Generally Stored? Delving into the Digital Home of your ...The operating system (OS) is the heart and soul of a computer, orchestrating every action and interaction between hardware and software. But have you ever wondered where on a computer is the operating system generally stored? The answer lies in the intricate dance between hardware and software components, particularly within ...1 day ago
- How Many Watts Does a Laptop Use? Understanding Power Consumption and EfficiencyLaptops have become essential tools for work, entertainment, and communication, offering portability and functionality. However, with rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, understanding a laptop’s power consumption is more important than ever. So, how many watts does a laptop use? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t straightforward. It depends on several ...1 day ago
- How to Screen Record on a Dell Laptop A Guide to Capturing Your Screen with EaseScreen recording has become an essential tool for various purposes, such as creating tutorials, capturing gameplay footage, recording online meetings, or sharing information with others. Fortunately, Dell laptops offer several built-in and external options for screen recording, catering to different needs and preferences. This guide will explore various methods on ...1 day ago
- How Much Does it Cost to Fix a Laptop Screen? Navigating Repair Options and CostsA cracked or damaged laptop screen can be a frustrating experience, impacting productivity and enjoyment. Fortunately, laptop screen repair is a common service offered by various repair shops and technicians. However, the cost of fixing a laptop screen can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article delves into the ...1 day ago
- How Long Do Gaming Laptops Last? Demystifying Lifespan and Maximizing LongevityGaming laptops represent a significant investment for passionate gamers, offering portability and powerful performance for immersive gaming experiences. However, a common concern among potential buyers is their lifespan. Unlike desktop PCs, which allow for easier component upgrades, gaming laptops have inherent limitations due to their compact and integrated design. This ...1 day ago
- Climate Change: Turning the tideThe annual inventory report of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions has been released, showing that gross emissions have dropped for the third year in a row, to 78.4 million tons: All-told gross emissions have decreased by over 6 million tons since the Zero Carbon Act was passed in 2019. ...1 day ago
- How to Unlock Your Computer A Comprehensive Guide to Regaining AccessExperiencing a locked computer can be frustrating, especially when you need access to your files and applications urgently. The methods to unlock your computer will vary depending on the specific situation and the type of lock you encounter. This guide will explore various scenarios and provide step-by-step instructions on how ...1 day ago
- Faxing from Your Computer A Modern Guide to Sending Documents DigitallyWhile the world has largely transitioned to digital communication, faxing still holds relevance in certain industries and situations. Fortunately, gone are the days of bulky fax machines and dedicated phone lines. Today, you can easily send and receive faxes directly from your computer, offering a convenient and efficient way to ...1 day ago
- Protecting Your Home Computer A Guide to Cyber AwarenessIn our increasingly digital world, home computers have become essential tools for work, communication, entertainment, and more. However, this increased reliance on technology also exposes us to various cyber threats. Understanding these threats and taking proactive steps to protect your home computer is crucial for safeguarding your personal information, finances, ...1 day ago
- Server-Based Computing Powering the Modern Digital LandscapeIn the ever-evolving world of technology, server-based computing has emerged as a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure. This article delves into the concept of server-based computing, exploring its various forms, benefits, challenges, and its impact on the way we work and interact with technology. Understanding Server-Based Computing: At its core, ...1 day ago
- Vroom vroom go the big red trucks
The absolute brass neck of this guy.We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, Luxon was saying a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re told the guy has seven salaried adults on TikTok duty. Sorry, doing social media. The absolute brass neck of it. The irony that the ...1 day ago - Jones finds $410,000 to help the government muscle in on a spat projectBuzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...2 days ago
- Again, hate crimes are not necessarily terrorism.
Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading ...2 days ago - Despair – construction consenting editionEric Crampton writes – Kainga Ora is the government’s house building agency. It’s been building a lot of social housing. Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium. It’s a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora ...2 days ago
- Coalition promises – will the Govt keep the commitment to keep Kiwis equal before the law?Muriel Newman writes – The Coalition Government says it is moving with speed to deliver campaign promises and reverse the damage done by Labour. One of their key commitments is to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law.” To achieve this, they have pledged they “will not advance ...2 days ago
- An impermanent public service is a guarantee of very little else but failureChris Trotter writes – The absence of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands ...2 days ago
- What happens after the war – Mariupol
Mariupol, on the Azov Sea coast, was one of the first cities to suffer almost complete destruction after the start of the Ukraine War started in late February 2022. We remember the scenes of absolute destruction of the houses and city structures. The deaths of innocent civilians – many of ...2 days ago - Babies and benefits – no good newsLindsay Mitchell writes – Ten years ago, I wrote the following in a Listener column: Every year around one in five new-born babies will be reliant on their caregivers benefit by Christmas. This pattern has persisted from at least 1993. For Maori the number jumps to over one in three. ...2 days ago
- Should the RBNZ be looking through climate inflation?
2 days ago - Bernard's pick 'n' mix of the news links
The top six news links I’ve seen elsewhere in the last 24 hours, as of 9:16 am on Thursday, April 18 are:Housing: Tauranga residents living in boats, vans RNZ Checkpoint Louise TernouthHousing: Waikato councillor says wastewater plant issues could hold up Sleepyhead building a massive company town Waikato Times Stephen ...2 days ago - Gordon Campbell on the public sector carnage, and misogyny as terrorismIt’s a simple deal. We pay taxes in order to finance the social services we want and need. The carnage now occurring across the public sector though, is breaking that contract. Over 3,000 jobs have been lost so far. Many are in crucial areas like Education where the impact of ...2 days ago
- Meeting the Master Baiters
Hi,A friend had their 40th over the weekend and decided to theme it after Curb Your Enthusiasm fashion icon Susie Greene. Captured in my tiny kitchen before I left the house, I ending up evoking a mix of old lesbian and Hillary Clinton — both unintentional.Me vs Hillary ClintonIf you’re ...2 days ago - How extreme was the Earth's temperature in 2023This is a re-post from Andrew Dessler at the Climate Brink blog In 2023, the Earth reached temperature levels unprecedented in modern times. Given that, it’s reasonable to ask: What’s going on? There’s been lots of discussions by scientists about whether this is just the normal progression of global warming or if something ...2 days ago
- Backbone, revisited
The schools are on holiday and the sun is shining in the seaside village and all day long I have been seeing bunches of bikes; Mums, Dads, teens and toddlers chattering, laughing, happy, having a bloody great time together. Cheers, AT, for the bits of lane you’ve added lately around the ...2 days ago - Ministers are not above the lawToday in our National-led authoritarian nightmare: Shane Jones thinks Ministers should be above the law: New Zealand First MP Shane Jones is accusing the Waitangi Tribunal of over-stepping its mandate by subpoenaing a minister for its urgent hearing on the Oranga Tamariki claim. The tribunal is looking into the ...3 days ago
- What’s the outfit you can hear going down the gurgler? Probably it’s David Parker’s Oceans Sec...Buzz from the Beehive Point of Order first heard of the Oceans Secretariat in June 2021, when David Parker (remember him?) announced a multi-agency approach to protecting New Zealand’s marine ecosystems and fisheries. Parker (holding the Environment, and Oceans and Fisheries portfolios) broke the news at the annual Forest & ...3 days ago
- Will politicians let democracy die in the darkness?Bryce Edwards writes – Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. ...3 days ago
- Matt Doocey doubles down on trans “healthcare”Citizen Science writes – Last week saw two significant developments in the debate over the treatment of trans-identifying children and young people – the release in Britain of the final report of Dr Hilary Cass’s review into gender healthcare, and here in New Zealand, the news that the ...3 days ago
- A TikTok Prime Minister.
One night while sleeping in my bed I had a beautiful dreamThat all the people of the world got together on the same wavelengthAnd began helping one anotherNow in this dream, universal love was the theme of the dayPeace and understanding and it happened this wayAfter such an eventful day ...3 days ago - Texas LessonsThis is a guest post by Oscar Simms who is a housing activist, volunteer for the Coalition for More Homes, and was the Labour Party candidate for Auckland Central at the last election.
...
3 days ago - Bernard's pick 'n' mix of the news links at 6:06 am
The top six news links I’ve seen elsewhere in the last 24 hours as of 6:06 am on Wednesday, April 17 are:Must read: Secrecy shrouds which projects might be fast-tracked RNZ Farah HancockScoop: Revealed: Luxon has seven staffers working on social media content - partly paid for by taxpayer Newshub ...3 days ago - Fighting poverty on the holiday highwayTurning what Labour called the “holiday highway” into a four-lane expressway from Auckland to Whangarei could bring at least an economic benefit of nearly two billion a year for Northland each year. And it could help bring an end to poverty in one of New Zealand’s most deprived regions. The ...3 days ago
- Bernard's six-stack of substacks at 6:26 pm
Tonight’s six-stack includes: launching his substack with a bunch of his previous documentaries, including this 1992 interview with Dame Whina Cooper. and here crew give climate activists plenty to do, including this call to submit against the Fast Track Approvals bill. writes brilliantly here on his substack ...3 days ago - At a glance – Is the science settled?On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...3 days ago
- Apposite Quotations.
3 days ago - What’s a life worth now?
You're in the mall when you hear it: some kind of popping sound in the distance, kids with fireworks, maybe. But then a moment of eerie stillness is followed by more of the fireworks sound and there’s also screaming and shrieking and now here come people running for their lives.Does ...3 days ago - Howling at the MoonKarl du Fresne writes – There’s a crisis in the news media and the media are blaming it on everyone except themselves. Culpability is being deflected elsewhere – mainly to the hapless Minister of Communications, Melissa Lee, and the big social media platforms that are accused of hoovering ...4 days ago
- Newshub is Dead.
I don’t normally send out two newsletters in a day but I figured I’d say something about… the news. If two newsletters is a bit much then maybe just skip one, I don’t want to overload people. Alternatively if you’d be interested in sometimes receiving multiple, smaller updates from me, ...4 days ago - Seymour is chuffed about cutting early-learning red tape – but we hear, too, that Jones has loose...Buzz from the Beehive David Seymour and Winston Peters today signalled that at least two ministers of the Crown might be in Wellington today. Seymour (as Associate Minister of Education) announced the removal of more red tape, this time to make it easier for new early learning services to be ...4 days ago
- Bryce Edwards: Will politicians let democracy die in the darkness?Politicians across the political spectrum are implicated in the New Zealand media’s failing health. Either through neglect or incompetent interventions, successive governments have failed to regulate, foster, and allow a healthy Fourth Estate that can adequately hold politicians and the powerful to account. Our political system is suffering from the ...4 days ago
- Was Hawkesby entirely wrong?David Farrar writes – The Broadcasting Standards Authority ruled: Comments by radio host Kate Hawkesby suggesting Māori and Pacific patients were being prioritised for surgery due to their ethnicity were misleading and discriminatory, the Broadcasting Standards Authority has found. It is a fact such patients are prioritised. ...4 days ago
- PRC shadow looms as the Solomons head for electionPRC and its proxies in Solomons have been preparing for these elections for a long time. A lot of money, effort and intelligence have gone into ensuring an outcome that won’t compromise Beijing’s plans. Cleo Paskall writes – On April 17th the Solomon Islands, a country of ...4 days ago
- Climate Change: Criminal ecocideWe are in the middle of a climate crisis. Last year was (again) the hottest year on record. NOAA has just announced another global coral bleaching event. Floods are threatening UK food security. So naturally, Shane Jones wants to make it easier to mine coal: Resources Minister Shane Jones ...4 days ago
- Is saving one minute of a politician's time worth nearly $1 billion?Is speeding up the trip to and from Wellington airport by 12 minutes worth spending up more than $10 billion? Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The six news items that stood out to me in the last day to 8:26 am today are:The Lead: Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced ...4 days ago
- Long Tunnel or Long Con?Yesterday it was revealed that Transport Minister had asked Waka Kotahi to look at the options for a long tunnel through Wellington. State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the ...4 days ago
- Smoke And Mirrors.
You're a fraud, and you know itBut it's too good to throw it all awayAnyone would do the sameYou've got 'em goingAnd you're careful not to show itSometimes you even fool yourself a bitIt's like magicBut it's always been a smoke and mirrors gameAnyone would do the sameForty six billion ...4 days ago - What is Mexico doing about climate change?This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections The June general election in Mexico could mark a turning point in ensuring that the country’s climate policies better reflect the desire of its citizens to address the climate crisis, with both leading presidential candidates expressing support for renewable energy. Mexico is the ...4 days ago
- State of humanity, 2024
2024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?When I say 2024 I really mean the state of humanity in 2024.Saturday night, we watched Civil War because that is one terrifying cliff we've ...4 days ago - Govt’s Wellington tunnel vision aims to ease the way to the airport (but zealous promoters of cycl...Buzz from the Beehive A pet project and governmental tunnel vision jump out from the latest batch of ministerial announcements. The government is keen to assure us of its concern for the wellbeing of our pets. It will be introducing pet bonds in a change to the Residential Tenancies Act ...5 days ago
- The case for cultural connectednessA recent report generated from a Growing Up in New Zealand (GUiNZ) survey of 1,224 rangatahi Māori aged 11-12 found: Cultural connectedness was associated with fewer depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms and better quality of life. That sounds cut and dry. But further into the report the following appears: Cultural connectedness is ...5 days ago
- Useful context on public sector job cutsDavid Farrar writes – The Herald reports: From the gory details of job-cuts news, you’d think the public service was being eviscerated. While the media’s view of the cuts is incomplete, it’s also true that departments have been leaking the particulars faster than a Wellington ...5 days ago
- Gordon Campbell On When Racism Comes Disguised As Anti-racismRemember the good old days, back when New Zealand had a PM who could think and speak calmly and intelligently in whole sentences without blustering? Even while Iran’s drones and missiles were still being launched, Helen Clark was live on TVNZ expertly summing up the latest crisis in the Middle ...5 days ago
- Govt ignored economic analysis of smokefree reversal5 days ago
- True Blue.
True loveYou're the one I'm dreaming ofYour heart fits me like a gloveAnd I'm gonna be true blueBaby, I love youI’ve written about the job cuts in our news media last week. The impact on individuals, and the loss to Aotearoa of voices covering our news from different angles.That by ...5 days ago - Who is running New Zealand’s foreign policy?While commentators, including former Prime Minister Helen Clark, are noting a subtle shift in New Zealand’s foreign policy, which now places more emphasis on the United States, many have missed a key element of the shift. What National said before the election is not what the government is doing now. ...5 days ago
- Fast-track submissions period must be extended
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...12 hours ago - Release: Progress on climate will be undone by Govt
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...12 hours ago - Release: Dark day for Kiwi kids as a third of Govt cuts affect themNews that 1000 jobs at the Ministry of Education and Oranga Tamariki could go is devastating for future generations of New Zealanders. ...3 days ago
- Release: Alarm as Government signals further blow to school lunchesMore essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...3 days ago
- Release: Quick, submit – stop Govt’s dodgy approvals billThe Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...4 days ago
- Government throws coal on the climate crisis fireThe Government’s policy announced today to ease consenting for coal mining will have a lasting impact across generations. ...4 days ago
- Release: Public transport costs to double as National looks at unaffordable roading project insteadCancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...5 days ago
- Release: Cost of living in Auckland still not a priorityA laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...5 days ago
- Greens look to fast-track submissions on harmful lawThe Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...1 week ago
- Release: Govt should stop making people’s lives harder and build more homesThe National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...1 week ago
- Release: Melissa Lee missing in action on mediaThe action Melissa Lee promised to protect democracy and the media sector is missing, Media and Communications spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...1 week ago
- Landlord Government leaves little hope for rentersThe Government’s announcement on tenancy rules prove that it does not care about renters. ...1 week ago
- Opportunity to build a more sustainable economyGreen Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...1 week ago
- Significant step forward in fixing cruel and unjust pastA significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...1 week ago
- Missed opportunity but NZ will surely one day recognise the right to a sustainable environmentNew Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...1 week ago
- Release: Don’t cut our lunches – clear message sent to GovernmentTens of thousands of people are demanding the Government commits to fully funding free and healthy school lunches. ...1 week ago
- Release: Govt makes U-turn on Suicide Prevention OfficeLabour welcomes the Government’s U-turn on the closure of the Suicide Prevention Office, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...1 week ago
- CCC issues warning over further climate delayToday’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...2 weeks ago
- Luxon targets lame and lousy example of leadershipIf talk is cheap, Chris Luxon’s “targets” are bankrupt. ...2 weeks ago
- Luxon targets are lousy example of leadershipIf talk is cheap, Chris Luxon’s “targets” are bankrupt. ...2 weeks ago
- Release: Commitment to disability communities missing from Govt prioritiesMinister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...2 weeks ago
- Methane target review is dangerous duplicationThe Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...2 weeks ago
- Release: Government must commit to school building project for disabled studentsThe Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...2 weeks ago
- Release: National must take mental health seriouslyMental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...2 weeks ago
- Referendums for Māori wards a racist step backwardsThe Government's imposed referendum on Māori wards is a racist step backwards for Māori representation, and disregards Te Tiriti o Waitangi. ...2 weeks ago
- Release: Job losses at Health not worth it for tax cutsNew Zealand will feel the harm of the National Government’s reckless cuts to jobs at the health ministry for generations, says Ayesha Verrall. ...2 weeks ago
- Press release: No Māori initiatives in Government’s nothing planMāori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...2 weeks ago
- Thirty six point PR spinThe Government’s ‘36 point’ plan for the next three months is as pointless as it is hollow. ...3 weeks ago
- Thirty six point PR spinThe Government’s ‘36 point’ plan for the next three months is as pointless as it is hollow. ...3 weeks ago
- Thirty six point PR spinThe Government’s ‘36 point’ plan for the next three months is as pointless as it is hollow. ...3 weeks ago
- Release: Social housing off Government’s to-do listThe Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...3 weeks ago
- Release: Less money in most people’s pockets this AprilChanges to minimum wage and benefit indexation means many New Zealanders will get less this year, as the Government gives a big tax break to landlords instead. ...3 weeks ago
- $41m to support clean energy in South East Asia
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...12 hours ago - Minister releases Fast-track stakeholder listThe Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...14 hours ago
- Judicial appointments announcedAttorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...15 hours ago
- Education Minister heads to major teaching summit in SingaporeEducation Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...15 hours ago
- Value of stopbank project proven during cycloneA stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...16 hours ago
- Anzac commemorations, Türkiye relationship focus of visitForeign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...16 hours ago
- Minister to Europe for OECD meeting, Anzac DayScience, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...18 hours ago
- Comprehensive Partnership the goal for NZ and the PhilippinesPrime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...1 day ago
- Government commits $20m to Westport flood protectionThe Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...1 day ago
- Taupō takes pole positionThe Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...2 days ago
- Cost of living support for low-income homeownersLocal Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...2 days ago
- Government backing mussel spat projectThe Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...2 days ago
- Government focused on getting people into workBenefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...2 days ago
- Clean energy key driver to reducing emissionsThe Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...2 days ago
- Earthquake-prone buildings review brought forwardThe Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...2 days ago
- Thailand and NZ to agree to Strategic PartnershipPrime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...2 days ago
- Government consults on extending coastal permits for portsRMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...3 days ago
- Inflation coming down, but more work to doToday’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...3 days ago
- School attendance restored as a priority in health adviceRefreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...3 days ago
- Unnecessary bureaucracy cut in oceans sectorOceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...3 days ago
- Patterson promoting NZ’s wool sector at International CongressAssociate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...4 days ago
- Removing red tape to help early learners thriveThe Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...4 days ago
- RMA changes to cut coal mining consent red tapeChanges to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...4 days ago
- McClay reaffirms strong NZ-China trade relationshipTrade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...4 days ago
- Prime Minister Luxon acknowledges legacy of Singapore Prime Minister LeePrime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...4 days ago
- PMs Luxon and Lee deepen Singapore-NZ tiesPrime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...4 days ago
- Antarctica New Zealand Board appointmentsForeign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...4 days ago
- Finance Minister travels to Washington DCFinance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...5 days ago
- Pet bonds a win/win for renters and landlordsThe coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...5 days ago
- Long Tunnel for SH1 Wellington being consideredState Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...5 days ago
- New Zealand condemns Iranian strikesPrime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...5 days ago
- Huge interest in Government’s infrastructure plansHundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...1 week ago
- Health Minister thanks outgoing Health New Zealand ChairHealth Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...1 week ago
- Roads of National Significance planning underwayThe NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...1 week ago
- Navigating an unstable global environmentNew Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...1 week ago
- NZ welcomes Australian Governor-GeneralPrime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...1 week ago
- Pseudoephedrine back on shelves for WinterAssociate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...1 week ago
- NZ and the US: an ever closer partnershipNew Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...1 week ago
- Joint US and NZ declarationApril 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...1 week ago
- NZ and US to undertake further practical Pacific cooperationForeign Minister Winston Peters has announced further New Zealand cooperation with the United States in the Pacific Islands region through $16.4 million in funding for initiatives in digital connectivity and oceans and fisheries research. “New Zealand can achieve more in the Pacific if we work together more urgently and ...1 week ago
- Rousing farewell for Kiwi doctors flying out to Gaza aid flotilla
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...6 hours ago - Communities Against The Fast-track Heartened By ‘Overwhelming’ Public Response; Disgusted By ‘...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...7 hours ago - Renters Rights To Drastically Reduce Under Landlord GovernmentThe Government’s announced changes around tenancy rules set renters’ rights back by nearly a decade. ...7 hours ago
- NZPI Submission on Fast Track Approvals BillOur response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...8 hours ago
- Fast Track Invite List Includes Most Destructive Industries In New ZealandThe new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...8 hours ago
- Eugene Doyle: Helen Clark on why AUKUS isn’t in New Zealand’s national interestCOMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...8 hours ago
- Government releases list of organisations shoulder-tapped for fast-track consents
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...9 hours ago - The Week in Politics: Job cuts surge and Waitangi Tribunal troubleAnalysis - It's been a grim week for public servants, while trouble is also brewing between the government and Waitangi Tribunal. ...10 hours ago
- It never rains but it pours: intense rain and flash floods have increased inland in eastern Australi...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...10 hours ago
- Watch: Christopher Luxon speaks to media in ManilaThe PM has defended how he's talked up NZ trade on his trip to Southeast Asia, after criticism from his own delegation. ...11 hours ago
- ‘It could be the death of the museum’: why research cuts at a South Australian institution have ...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...11 hours ago
- Government signs off $41m clean energy deal with Asian Development BankThe government has committed $41 million to clean energy transition at the Asian Development Bank's Energy Transition Mechanism. ...11 hours ago
- Are 2 mid-career AFL retirements a sign Australian athletes are taking brain health more seriously?Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...13 hours ago
- Luxon: Waitangi Tribunal comments from coalition parties 'ill considered'Comments from ACT and NZ First ministers about the Tribunal were "ill considered" and "that message will be underscored" to them, the PM says. ...13 hours ago
- Mental Health Foundation Facing Staff Cuts From Govt Funding SqueezeThe Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...14 hours ago
- I wholeheartedly recommend The President: a brilliant revival of a play of decay, terror and revulsi...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...14 hours ago
- How the coolest little capital is shrinkingIt's not the first time a government has targeted public servants for job cuts, but this time Wellington is really feeling it. ...14 hours ago
- Many prisoners go years without touching a smartphone. It means they struggle to navigate life on th...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...14 hours ago
- Ministers accused of Cabinet Manual breach with threats to Waitangi Tribunal
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...14 hours ago - Good news: midlife health is about more than a waist measurement. Here’s whySource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...14 hours ago
- The Friday Poem: ‘Mitochondrial Problem’ by Evangeline Riddiford Graham
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...14 hours ago - The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending April 18The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38) Hot off the press, this debut ...14 hours ago
- Department of Conservation closing Dunedin centre, but no jobs lostVisitor habits are changing and DOC needs to adapt in a financially sustainable way, its operations director says. ...14 hours ago
- Unions Collaborate With Thousands Of Job CutsWith New Zealand officially in recession, a swathe of mass sackings is currently sending shockwaves through the entire working class. ...14 hours ago
- Watch live: Christopher Luxon speaks to media in ManilaPrime Minister Christopher Luxon is speaking to reporters in Manila after pledging greater defence cooperation with the Philippines. Watch live. ...15 hours ago
- Government sent please explain letter to Wellington City Council over transport disagreementThe contents were revealed in correspondence from Simeon Brown and Chris Bishop to Wellington's Mayor. ...15 hours ago
- Some families push back against journalists who mine social media for photos – they have every rig...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...15 hours ago
- Mental Health Foundation staff cuts loom, with funding falling behind rising costsChief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...15 hours ago
- The ‘devil comet’ 12P/Pons-Brooks has finally become visible from Australia. What can we expect?Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Pons–Brooks visible from Utah, March 9 2024. James Peirce/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND If you’re a fan of all things space, you’ve doubtless heard about the “devil comet”, which has been captivating keen-eyed observers in the ...15 hours ago
- Rugby stadiums are sold as an economic asset – but NZ needs to ask if they’re really worth itSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Hamlin, Senior Lecturer in Marketing , University of Otago A multi-billion dollar stadium precinct has been proposed for Auckland, one of three proposals in front of Auckland Council for a new stadium in the city. The council is also considering revamping ...15 hours ago
- Auckland dog attacks: Callouts for attacks on other animals going upRoaming dogs are responsible for more than a thousand attacks on animals each year, and the number is growing. ...16 hours ago
- What access to puberty blockers means for trans young people and their whānauThe Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...16 hours ago
- NZ and Philippines pledge defence cooperation amid rising tensionsThe commitment came after a sit-down meeting between Christopher Luxon and President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Romualdez Marcos Jr overnight. ...17 hours ago
- How superblocks can help reimagine city lifeBarcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...18 hours ago
- Fire engineering expertise may take a big hit with job cuts at MBIEThe public sector cuts are poised to take out a big chunk of expertise at the country's building regulator. ...18 hours ago
- “Fast-track Law To Kill Kiwi”: Students Say Fight Against Anti-democracy Legislation Is Only Jus...Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...19 hours ago
- ‘We have thousands of Modis’: the secret behind the BJP’s enduring success in IndiaSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...19 hours ago
- Online schooling is not just for lockdowns. Could it work for your child?Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...19 hours ago
- Hear me out: You can shove your reusable period productsYes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...19 hours ago
- Rip It Up And Start Over – Fast-Track Approvals Bill Needs To Be Scrapped“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...19 hours ago
- Maori Authority Warns Government On Fast Track LegislationThe Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...19 hours ago
- Why the government’s haste in changing the health system could come back to haunt itSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...19 hours ago
- Many suicides are related to gambling. How can we tackle this problem?Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether you’re watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...19 hours ago
- Things that go buzz in the night – our global study found there really are more insects out after ...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...19 hours ago
- Why don’t Australians talk about their salaries? Pay transparency and fairness go hand-in-handSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, it’s not the done thing to know – let alone ask – what our colleagues are paid. Yet, it’s easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...19 hours ago
- ‘Character’ And Its Impact On Immigration StatusThe Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...20 hours ago
- 20,000 more on jobseeker benefits than this time last yearThe government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are ...21 hours ago
- All of the Raglan Roast cafes in Wellington, ranked from worst to bestRaglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best? I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. It’s consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, ...23 hours ago
- Auckland uni students threaten rent strike over rising accommodation feesResidents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously. The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation. The Students ...23 hours ago
- Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 19 AprilLoading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question? Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 19 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...23 hours ago
- Financial literacy should be on all of usOpinion: With maths understanding at 42 percent for Year 8 students, there’s no doubt something has to be done. But how? The post Financial literacy should be on all of us appeared first on Newsroom. ...23 hours ago
- Missy rustles to stardom in CanadaHineaupounamu ‘Missy’ Nuku has been scaling mountains in Canada for her college basketball team, the Lakeland Rustlers. Alberta is currently home for the 20-year-old point guard, who is in her first year of a scholarship at Lakeland College, where she is studying for a business degree. She has certainly made ...23 hours ago
- Emissions fall again – now NZ needs to up the paceOfficial figures confirm New Zealand produced less climate pollution in 2022 than in any other year in the 21st century The post Emissions fall again – now NZ needs to up the pace appeared first on Newsroom. ...23 hours ago
- Warning of death from a million cuts as Oceans Secretariat dissolvedShane Jones says people voted for change, but opponents say small cuts such as ending a special oceans secretariat are starting to add up The post Warning of death from a million cuts as Oceans Secretariat dissolved appeared first on Newsroom. ...23 hours ago
- Defence deal to counter Beijing’s aggression in South China SeaNew Zealand and the Philippines have signed a new maritime security agreement and stated their concerns over activity in the South China Sea, as Chinese vessels continue to flout international law. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos committed to signing a Mutual Logistics Supporting Arrangement by ...23 hours ago
- Wellington’s ebb and flow of public servantsThe thousands of government “back-office” job cuts are causing widespread pain in the capital city. In today’s episode of The Detail, we speak to three journalists and a think tank researcher, looking at the larger picture around the cuts and what effect it will have on Wellington, a city that’s ...23 hours ago
- New Zealand transport planning has gone off the railsOpinion: The famed American architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham once said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!” Burnham wouldn’t have been referring to the transport plans in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past five years; projects so big they hadn’t the credibility to ...23 hours ago
- Daily crossword, Friday 19 AprilThe post Daily crossword, Friday 19 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...23 hours ago
- Brakes on transport and logistics sector as demand for freight slowsThe transport sector is currently in the slow lane The post Brakes on transport and logistics sector as demand for freight slows appeared first on Newsroom. ...23 hours ago
- Grattan on Friday: Ethnic tensions will complicate the Albanese government’s multicultural policy ...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra When ASIO boss Mike Burgess delivered his annual threat assessment earlier this year, he stressed the rising danger posed by espionage and foreign interference. “In 2024, threats to our way of life have surpassed ...1 day ago
- Group plans work to improve safety of female MPsNew research shows harassment of elected officials - especially women - is on the rise. ...1 day ago
- Ukraine warns of WW3 ahead of long-stalled Congress aid voteUkraine's Prime Minister says his country desperately needs the US to approve long-stalled security assistance. ...1 day ago
- PSA astonished Education Minister expects hiring of contractors to review curriculumHiring contractors is an appalling solution when people who could do the work are losing their jobs, the PSA says. ...1 day ago
- Crown lawyers attempt to block Waitangi Tribunal summons to Minister for ChildrenThe Tribunal had called on Minister for Children Karen Chhour to provide evidence at an urgent inquiry into the repeal of Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. ...1 day ago
- Luxon refuses to guarantee public consultation on AUKUS Pillar 2Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says it's "far too premature" to be confirming whether the public would be consulted on joining AUKUS Pillar 2. ...1 day ago
- Visualising the 1800s or designing wedding invitations: 6 ways you can use AI beyond generating textSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University Midjourney image by T.J. Thomson As more than half of Australian office workers report using generative artificial intelligence (AI) for work, we’re starting to see this technology affect every ...1 day ago
- Falls, fractures and self-harm: 4 charts on how kids’ injury risk changes over time and differs fo...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Nicole Sharwood, Injury epidemiologist | Expert Witness, UNSW Sydney Sergey Novikov/Shutterstock Injuries are the leading cause of disability and death among Australian children and adolescents. At least a quarter of all emergency department presentations during childhood are injury-related. Injuries can ...1 day ago
- Choice and control: will NDIS reforms mean people with disability don’t get to decide who they liv...Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Di Winkler, Adjunct Associate Professor, Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University Shutterstock/Ground Picture Many Australians with disability feel on the edge of a precipice right now. Recommendations from the disability royal commission and the NDIS review were released late ...1 day ago
- Asbestos in playground mulch: how to avoid a repeat of this circular economy scandalSource: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Salman Shooshtarian, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University Salman Shooshtarian Asbestos has been found in mulch used for playgrounds, schools, parks and gardens across Sydney and Melbourne. Local communities naturally fear for the health of their ...1 day ago
- Could Albanese’s bet on homegrown green industries be the boost our regions deserve?Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madeline Taylor, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University Cloudy Designs/Shutterstock Right now, there’s a global race underway. The goal: bring back manufacturing and energy jobs as the energy transition speeds up. In 2022, America launched its mammoth Inflation Reduction Act and the ...1 day ago
- Watch: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon won't say if government will consult public on joining ...Asked multiple times if the public will be consulted on joining the defence pact, Luxon repeatedly said that was yet to be worked through. ...1 day ago
- Watch live: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon speaks in PhilippinesPrime Minister Christopher Luxon is speaking to reporters on the third leg of his Southeast Asia trip, from Manila in the Philippines. ...2 days ago
- Māori lawyers call Shane Jones' Waitangi Tribunal comments 'inappropriate'The Māori Law Society says his comments breach the principle of the separation of powers and the Cabinet Manual. ...2 days ago
- Abortions Increase 25% Since Law ChangeFamily First says that the latest abortion statistics make grim and upsetting reading, with a 25% increase in abortions since the decriminalisation of abortion in March 2020. According to an Official Information Act request received by Right to Life ...2 days ago
- Over Half Of New Zealanders Feel That The Country Is In Decline And That Our Society Is BrokenIpsos New Zealand's inaugural participation in a global study on populism reveals a pervasive sense of societal and economic decline among New Zealanders. MORE DETAILS AND FULL REPORT HERE Ipsos New Zealand's inaugural participation in a global study ...2 days ago
Bill, you were missed! I was worried…
Great to hear from you regardless the circumstances.
I reckon we're cooked too, but another commentor talked me into not giving up only a couple of days ago (thanks RL).
To reabsorb large quantities of carbon we might set up massive artificial reef structures of timbers that last under the sea and let oysters do their magic of building calcareous reefs on top. Not a short term thing, but it has tremendous potential.
Stop building with concrete. All structures now made of wood, which is sequestered carbon. Stop building crappy energy hog buildings.
Switch agriculture over to mostly tree cropping systems with animals cycled through them for fertilising/natural cycling of nutrients/herbal ley.
Revert back to local manufacture of human neccessities like underwear… clothing, food, shelter… We can easily care for ourselves in these aspects, while global markets are untenable.
Research/collate existing research on remineralisation of soils and the effects the soil microbiota have on plant nutrients as current practise decimates these organisms e.g.
"This study shows that AMF play a key role in grassland by improving plant nutrition and soil structure, and by regulating the make‐up of the plant community"
https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2006.01862.x
Much work to be done there.
Regenerative agriculture as the new standard. Organic green washers should sod off.
The underwear example is interesting. With a bunch of natural materials you'd think they were relatively 'green' but it's the way we grow things and process them that brings all the pollution. The ferts and chemicals and transporting everything on a world tour. Why have my undies been on a world tour and I haven't? Hows that bloody fair?
And of course, eat the rich.
"Eat the Rich" good movie!
Excellent post. Folks, don’t skim it, read every word.
Hi. Good the hear from you again r0b. I trust life is doing you well
And you RL. Some bumps in life’s road of late, but it’s stuff that everyone has to deal with at some point. Mostly fine, hope you (all!) are too.
Bad idea to start any essay, especially an otherwise thoughtful one like this, by referencing the glib and shallow Joe Bennett.
Haven't read any of Bennett's books, but found his appearances on the 'Moon TV' Book Zone spoof hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCM6PZR38y0
so glib and shallow he actually went to where the stuff was made talked to and observed the people and the process….what have you done lately?
Got up close and personal in the manufacturing process for sockpuppets?
Surely Mrs KramHairHasBeen would reject that notion.
Sacha (Andre?) – what notion? Will consider, and then accept or reject, unambiguous notions provided that they’re clearly communicated. Is that too much to ask?
Tbh, thought I'd been clear in rejecting Sacha's notion, as clarified by McFlock, but if that notion, or another notion, is still on the table then please speak up. https://thestandard.org.nz/daily-review-04-06-2019/#comment-1624936
Sacha, if you'd rather that I don't reply to your comments to The Standard, then please say so and I'll oblige – I don’t need to respond to appreciate/enjoy your comments.
I thought I was fairly clear a bit further down that thread you just linked that I see no reason to accuse you of being a sockpuppet, and that I see quite a few reasons to believe that you are not a sockpuppet.
Thanks Andre – initially struggled with the "sockpuppet" concept (I started ‘blogging’ rather late in life, and The Standard is the only blog I submit comments to), but am understanding it better now, with the help of the "Morrissey" and "Professor Longhair" identities as an apparent example.
Sacha clearly remains upset (if their "Mrs KramHairHasBeen" comment @3.2.1.1 is anything to go by) – can only reiterate that it was Sacha who insinuated that "Drowsy M. Kram" was a sockpuppet identity. Now accept that was a genuine mistake, but it did upset me once I understood the acusation. Still, forgive and forget.
Sacha now knows that as far as I’m concerned DMK is not a sockpoppet.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-08-06-2019/#comment-1625953 and Sacha’s reply to that comment.
Cheers Incognito – I made the mistake of responding to a Professor Longhair comment with something other than derision.
Morrissey's and Prof. Longhair's comments often seem to draw a fair amount of venom, whereas I find at least some of them inventive and/or genuinely funny. Probably just a matter of personal preference.
Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself here and don’t let others dictate or bully you. Sometimes, there’s a bit of a pile on or ganging up on another commenter, usually a so-called ‘RWNJ’, and it is not pretty or uplifting. Best not to join the gang of hoons and stay out of it, I reckon. Feel free to draw the attention of moderators if it looks (very) serious.
Have you heard him pronounce on the situation in the Occupied Territories? I have, and no doubt the Professor has as well. Bennett's glib and shallow all right.
Ah…a Morrissey Breen condemnation…he must be doing something right.
You don't know anything about the situation in the Occupied Territories, and nor does Bennett. Of course you think he's "right" to be militantly ignorant like that.
do i not?…well since youve stated it I guess it must be so
No, I have inferred it from what I have read of you in the past.
Feel free to disabuse me of that notion.
nope
Didn't think you had the chops for this. I was right, sadly.
you are undoubtably right again Morrissey….but what comment do you have on Bills post?
You are taking the piss.
That is well put Bill, thanks…. the looming problem. In the part of Christchurch we were in (no longer – have already 'retreated'), flat, near the sea/estuary, water table less than 1.5m below our floorboards, I see no way out..
.. I see those parts of Chch really struggling within 20 years or so… that is like tomorrow..
And so what of our children? We have already been putting strategies in their minds to deal with it.. but they involve more of a survival approach, rather than a remedy approach.
I think one of the bigger questions is about humanity dealing with this where there are large populations, which we dont have here so much. How will populations at those river deltas cope? Where will they go? How will they feed themselves? The issue is overwhelming in those areas I think and I see only disaster. Complete and total disaster, which will reverberate around the planet, causing a slow panic and mass movement in all locations globally.
Like you Bill, I dont know the answer, other than to make moves to protect our own family and community.
Though here is one answer – stop spending. Dont pull the wallet out today. Dont buy anything at all, other than the veges for dinner. I have been doing this the last recent while and it is very liberating. As well as beneficial for this issue – most every dollar spend has a carbon cost.
And don’t travel. My god, it seems everyone but everyone travels.. euroland, fiji, aussie… how tedious. Just stp already, unless under sail. No more travelling.
Dunno, but am watching extremely closely….
"Stop spending" – good idea at the individual level, but unfortunately doing this on any scale puts economies into recession and usually hurts the most vulnerable among us first and hardest. "Don't travel" – yes it's amazing how much old, rich people travel to all parts of the world and brag about it afterwards. So as an individual, it's a good idea not to travel. But if the couple of million tourists who come here every year suddenly don't, then that industry sector collapses and we are in recession again with the usual unequal effects across the population.
If there are going to be sacrifices (and there will be) they will have y be shared equally – they cannot be allowed to fall where they may. Isolated, individual actions within a market system won't achieve that.
I suggest we redirect spending to restoration and resilience. Solar, electric, gardens, trees, helping others do similar.
Sustainable business, local merchants, etc. The economy can keep running just divest from the ne'er do well companies and green washers because who cares if they tank. Takes a bit of homework.
I'm saving so much just by gardening. But you got to (learn to cook and) eat it too, not grow it while shopping for pies…
The Achilles heel in my vegetarian plan: mince and cheese pies.
OMG We live. make a living by trading. When I go to the supermarket I go through the checkouts where people are working and packing and being paid which they then pay to other people.
The trouble with so many ardent greens is that they are so narrow-minded. Maybe they talk to the trees as in an old song, but I like to talk to people who are involved with others, working in their community, and getting paid for it. I buy fish and chips and say hello to the elderly owner and the young things that work the till and organise the raw materials, and I advised one of them to get a check at the doctor about an ailment, just to be sure. People I like them, in the main!
What about the children is a cliche wail in comedy like the Simpsons. But someone must consider them. And the parents too. My birthfather left NZ and ended up a year later dying in his bomber with his crew over Europe. He was thinking of others, and after WW2 we had a time when everything seemed possible. Now it is a different sort of conflict and we have to think of each other again. Spend less widely, think more locally and go to Trade Aid. Think of carbon, but don't stop travel – I'm going by bus when I can now. We can't stop being human, we have come so far, and need to keep with each other and enjoying things because much of the damage is done, just try and do our best to save what we have and plan how we will manage as bad things unroll. There was a tornado at Coopers Beach in Northland, a lightning strike somewhere, a new bacteria, insect, the capitalists are addicted to getting more. It is just a game actually and if they could transfer their addiction to something less harmful, we could all be a bit happier.
But let us have euthanasia within reasonable criteria so we can start lessening the burden of people on the world, and it on us. Let us old people die in quiet and resignation of getting old, or go in a blaze of colour, whatever, but let it be a celebration of life not as a ravaged customer of life who has insisted on getting every last bit and complains and demands more till the end. And love young parents and help them with their great job of bringing the next generation into a world they can be good loved people in. I would say that we need to stop being mean and self-centred, toss a coin to the busker, spread some generosity around to those why try, give help and kindness to the young – just don't spoil them so they think they have entitlements to pleasure at others' expense; and don't spoil our world for them.
Your posts on this subject always make me think "Well, if we're fucked anyway, I might as well stop donating money to the Greens, switch my vote to my actual class representatives, National, and make the most of the time we've got left." I should stop reading them.
I don't know, Bill's posts always make me think, 'we ought to at least do something' because the 'something' is better than 'nothing'. Or the pretend 'somethings' that duplicitous politicians try to reassure us with, all while maintaining the systems that have humanity on a suicidal trajectory.
What is the 'something'? Well perhaps deciding that those politicians are no longer fit for purpose and shutting down our suicidal economic system – a system that will kill us. Seems quite straight forward to me.
I reckon you have too much social awareness and conscience to be a Nat guy. We all like to do well, but it's how we go about it.
Ha ha, yes can't picture myself actually doing it, that would suck. Could also result in divorce if I were to do it and then later on it slipped out when I was drunk.
You are more of a go forward nobly aren't you? Better to band together and tackle our Everest than sit around degrading ourselves in a den of vice and thieves and viciousness which seems to be the result when people stop trying to live a life of integrity.
"switch my vote to my actual class representatives, National"..that's weird PM..how do Labour, or the Greens for that matter not represent your class?.
Unless you are in the very top percentile and have no need for any publicly funded or subsidised services. Even then, your Doctors, childrens teachers, etc are all relying on decent wages and conditions so they can take care of your important self interests, heck, even the gardener for the estate will need public services, health, training, bus transport.. to keep them in top shape to maintain things to your high standard.
And house prices, as a property investor I'm sure you are well aware that property values increase even more under a Labour Government. Not to mention they keep things rolling for the peasants so they can afford your rentals, not to mention keep up consumption at all the companies you are a shareholder with?.
Oh sure, I find the Greens represent me pretty well and I wouldn't have any problem voting for the current version of Labour either, but I'm referring to the class interests the various parties represent. People may dispute the idea that the modern Labour Party represents workers, but it remains clear that National represents the people who are well off.
National represents class interests far better than Labour does. It's just a different sort of class.
Dare I say: Classholes.
Oh, yes. Always makes me laugh when they go on about Labour being class warriors, because there's nothing whatsoever that Labour could teach National about class war.
how are you well off when the environment where you and yours reside is collapsing?
Perhaps you didn't read comment 5?
and perhaps i did
"People may dispute the idea that the modern Labour Party represents workers"…there is no dispute….they don't.
Turn Labour Left!
Nah, most of us are not fucked, but all of our children most definitely are.
Most people are not going to give up their standard of living voluntarily to save the planet. In the west, we'll piously or reluctantly recycle and ban plastic bags – but we'll also quietly vote for the party that promises more prosperity, lower taxes and cheaper energy. And the 3rd world/totalitarian states are no better – either they need massive increases in consumption to keep their populations quiescent or they are all like "hell no, we ain't missing out on the party."
We've really only ever had one option.
A Manhattan project to develop geo-engineering solutions (carbon sequestration, sun shields, cloud seeding, whatever) and new technologies (asteroid mining, fusion power etc) that will shift the Malthusian equation once more. Culture (via technology) got us into this pickle, and unless we want a catastrophe of untold suffering from the consequences of over-population and over-consumption we are going to have to rely on cultural solutions to save us.
Like it or not, the only people who will deliver this technological solution are the huge corporations who are currently part of the problem, because until (for example) they can make more money out of fusion than they can from coal and fossil fuels they won't stop burning coal and heavy oil.
So we are going to have to pay Exxon, and Mobil, and Boeing, and Lockheed-Martin, and all the rest to transform our energy grid and deploy the zero carbon economy, and we are going to have to pay them to build the rockets that will deploy the space shileds and all the rest.
Hoping that people will see the light and live less extravagant lives is a pipe dream.
Wishful thinking and paying oil companies…
That's some nasty BS right there.
How about we bombard the west with the actual truth of the matter, especially the young, and watch these wishy washy politicians get turfed out on their ass.
How about we use proven technology to regreen the world's deserts wherever feasible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDgDWbQtlKI
Much smarter than wishful thinking and a call to pay corporates. Fuck the corporate world.
Take a look at sea level rise estimates for NZ. Waterworld was not meant to be prophetic…
http://www.musther.net/nzslr/
Ummm…. Waterworld was a planet with almost zero land above sea level. That map is nowhere near that even in the worse case scenario.
Yeah I picked you for a Kevin Costner fan.
I liked The Bodyguard best. He was brilliant, Whitney was brilliant, and when Barrymore came over he did a take of the balcony scene that had the town hall in tears.
Good times.
And oddly enough I always had a soft spot for Kevin. I probably shouldn’t say this and maybe it speaks to my utter lack of social couth, but I never quite understood the scorn poured on Waterworld.
Waterworld highlighted the true value of soil. You don't see that often in a movie.
Not usually a major plot point it is true…
"Plot" – you're good, Gosman.
He made an interesting job of the Postman – a guy who really didn't want to fight.
He was brilliant, Whitney was brilliant….
You're joking, right?
What was so brilliant about old Leather-Lungs' destruction of this beautiful song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDqqm_gTPjc
I NEVER joke.
Oceanographer John Englander on rising sea levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvqY2NcBWI8&feature=youtu.be
Yes that is an especially good talk. I watched it a few days back. It's not just the problem he outlines, but some clear ways to think about it and how we might better respond which I got a lot from.
Errrr…. I will see your youtube and raise it by mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfo8XHGFAIQ
Unfortunately this guy doesn't understand the nature of forests.
It takes about 6 km of contiguous forest to create rain. The bacteria in the phyllosphere are released in updrafts (also an emergent property of forests) and catalyse the formation of ice crystals. Thus the irrigation of such projects is not a continuous energy input but a set up cost. In the long term this will replenish, rather than deplete, the aquifer. Aquifers are only non-renewable when you fail to provide rain making infrastructure, namely forests.
Large forests attract moisture-laden winds. Those release their water as rain. The trees pump it back into the sky. Elegant. You'd have to be daft to stop that draft.
I seem to remember Sir Kerry Burke of Environment Canterbury talking down clumps of trees at the head of rivers because they use up too much of the water wanted downstream. Sounded dangerous talk to me – IIRR.
I don't know whether he was talking just about pinus radiata which might not be the best ecological ones for the soil and water and undergrowth.
Sounds like nonsense to me. So, you start the erosion at the headwaters…
Did he say it while driving plastered or pontificating politically?
Possibly all three pees.
Have put in How to Get There… a piece that is an extensive look at past and present efforts of tree planting in Africa touching on Northern Sahara and the Sahel.
Yes. In essence this is something similar to what I have written below at 9.0. But we keep seeing this problem through a Western lens only, when at scale the problem is global. The big challenge is not the out of balance resource consumption of the developed world, it is going to be ensuring that the developing world leapfrogs our technical models into next generation, zero carbon, total recycling systems.
And for that I totally agree, it will indeed be the big corporations who we need to see this as the enormous economic opportunity that it is.
Handing them a blank cheque though… folly. They covered this all up as long as they could, absolutely not to be trusted.
Should they want to step up, sure, provide a service that isn't choking out life, ok.. We can pay for it when we see it.
Until then, screw em.
The reason why we do not trust the big global corporates is because they are not subject to a democratic global accountability. Because historically we have failed to adequately constrain their activities from a global perspective, they treated the world like the Wild West. They found ways to play one nation off against another, tax havens, regulatory loopholes and games that they were largely free to exploit.
The good news is that we are rapidly getting better at reigning them in; their ability to dodge tax is being curtailed, their ability to circumvent labour laws and environmental regulations is being reduced everywhere. We have some distance to go, but we are heading in the right direction.
In that sense I understand why no-one wants to hand them a 'blank cheque'. Yet it's a tough reality that it's these big corporates who have the resource and skills that are required to act on the scale needed. We just have to be competent and hard nosed enough to play their own games right back at them, and insist they play by our rules.
Where are the examples of the big corporates ability to dodge tax,their ability to circumvent labour laws and environmental regulations being curtailed?
Tax dodging is an issue that had gained increasing attention in the past decade and regulators, especially in Europe, are sharpening their teeth. A simple search shows plenty of serious articles presaging action.
Environmental laws are getting harder to circumvent; local regulations are being enforced and we see examples like plastic waste being returned to their country of origin.
Labour laws often become the subject of activist attention, Asian sweatshops are no longer as common or as oppressive. Shareholders are increasingly sensitive to being exposed on these sorts of matters.
Big mining companies these days will speak to a concept they call 'social licence to operate' … that unless they win the trust and confidence of locals they can find themselves shutdown or frozen out of future development.
Progress is patchy and incoherent, but the days of global corporates being able to get away with any old shit are numbered. The momentum to a coherent global structure of regulation is gaining steam.
Discussing doing something and actually doing something are two different things. Curtailing something involves the second not the first.
Well I guess the positive here is that I can rely on you to pick up on these details
Amazon tax 2018 $0.
"But according to government watchdog groups, the drop off in fines in 2018 is part of a broader pattern under the Trump administration of lax enforcement of environmental laws."
"Both reports make the case that the EPA is neglecting its mission and letting bad actors off the hook."
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/16/18183998/epa-andrew-wheeler-environmental-policy-enforcement
https://www.playthegame.org/news/news-articles/2016/0259_sports-brands-under-fire-for-ignoring-workers-rights/
You just live to waste peoples time don't you. Next time you have a question' why don't you google it.
So they are not being curtailed then are they?
By their actions shall we know them.
I saw Arundhati Roy make a similar point – though perhaps with different conclusions. She said that unless the people who profited from creating the problem, can also profit a second time from resolving it, there is no way our current economic system will permit effective responses to occur.
except 'they' arnt the ones burning copious quantities of coal and oil
That isn’t a solution. That is simple stupidity by someone who doesn’t understand the problem.
There is no known technical solution that isn't likely to cause at least as much of a problem.
FFS every possible technical process involves throwing enormous amounts of energy or chemicals into the earths volatiles (just have a think about the energy and volatiles through involved in launching ANY payload into orbit).
Doing sufficient cloud seeding would require probably as much aircraft as those currently flying – and that is assuming that it can even work (most of the scientific evidence is that it doesn't). Plus forming clouds in CO2 rich environment is just about as likely to raise temperatures as it is to lower them if the wrong cloud formations occur.
The only solution that I can see for the existing CO2 load in the oceans is twofold.
Adapt to higher sea levels, a much more extreme climate, lower food productivity, and stop throwing crap into our biosphere like chickens crapping in a farmyard.
As the sea level rises encourage the growth of swamps, marshes and estuaries and other forms of washing soil and vegetation into the sea. Help it along by killing anyone draining swamps and marshes as a basic eugenics measure against stupidity.
Unlike planting trees or reefs with their transient sequestation, that is an effective carbon sink – and one that is hard to burn.
Wetlands! Thank you I was having a mental glitch while trying to paint a picture of possible (natural) sinks yesterday.
Don't be too hard on those transient forests and reefs. Grow forests and make wood for structures, useful economically and ecologically thus easier to get people on board. Likewise kelp (chem ferts will go, kelp will help remineralise abused soils) and oysters (human nutrition).
Hempcrete seems promising or is there an issue? – e.g. scaling up.
First degree was earth sciences. Trees die so fast that in geological terms they only exist if they get swamped and appear as coal.
I kinda get your point but trees are multifaceted life support systems and an integral part of the hydrological cycle.
A new Manhatten project solution for today's problems –
funny (?) you should mention eugenics against stupidity….I suspect as things progress that may gain something of a following….yet another problem to add to the mix
Thank you. I haven't seen the nutritional value of plants declining discussed anywhere before. Makes sense.
CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been higher in the past and the planet still maintained healthy levels of plants and animals.
Ermm, how do I put this politely, you are deliberately trolling, how about you just fuck off.
Dear Editing staff. The planet will burn. How about you remove this insect who likes to detract from any conversation regarding educating and maybe saving ourselves.
I'm getting it now. I guess I was taking opposing views like I do hecklers, shoot down or ignore, bastards!
But… Gosman, despite asking inane questions he can easily find answers for (hint, better questions please) has generated a lot of useful conversation from others here, and with it information.
I'm sure most of you realised how this works long ago, I just clicked…
All the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8necbhPHuIA
I dont think thats right gosman – factually incorrect
No, I am factually accurate. What is different is that there wasn't a global civilisation that required a degree of climate stability. That is the challenge we face not the prospect of imminent global extinction.
So don't get you knickers in a twist Bill, Gossy has it sussed – seems he and the cockroaches will survive and will be perfectly healthy to boot.
The difference is that those times in the past with higher CO2 concentrations and thriving plant and critter populations were arrived at by slow changes over millenia and millions of years. Slow enough for random evolution to adjust.
Extremely rapid changes in CO2 concentration like we have caused and are continuing to cause are associated with mass extinction events.
https://theconversation.com/another-link-between-co2-and-mass-extinctions-of-species-12906
There is this idea that climate has changed slowly on the planet in the past and that is the default. There is little evidence that it is more inclined to change slowly versus rapidly.
Unfortunately it seems you didn't spend nine months of your life as a field assistant to a geologist who enjoyed impromptu tutorial sessions in the tent most evenings. Geologists have a completely different sense of time to normal people. To them a thousand years is less than an eyeblink. Ten thousand years is starting to rise out of the noise signal.
Of course this doesn't rule out some events happening quite rapidly. There is good evidence that the West Antarctic Ice sheld is prone to disintegrating abruptly and there has been other similar catastrophic events when land bridges suddenly failed. But in the bigger scheme of things the orbital cycles are quite gradual and the paleo records trend gradually with them.
What has not been seen at all is CO2 rising from 300 ppm to over 400 ppm in about 100 years. That is unprecendented.
That is exactly what I stated. Climate has changed both gradually AND rapidly in the past.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2014/10/29/new-study-shows-three-abrupt-pulses-of-co2-during-last-deglaciation/
You must know by now that I tend to read links like that
. What is says is:
That paper is talking about "pulses" of CO2 that raised atmospheric concentrations 10 to 15 ppm each in three discrete events each taking around a century, separated by thousands of years.
What we have done is literally an order of magnitude more extreme, raising the concentration 130ish ppm over the last 150ish years, with an accelerating increase and no relief in sight.
and fish can breath in water…can you?
FFS Gosman – where did you learn your science? From comic books?
Actually not. The biosphere was severely strained during several of those episodes of strong shifts in the atmospheric concentrations.
The two largest known extinction events were in the pre-cambrian to cambrian extinctions and the devonian extinctions. Both were a direct result of atmospheric changes involving changes in concentrations of CO2 from natural events spanning millions of years.
We look like we are managing to replicate that kind of change over 300 years. Go figure what that will mean to our apex species – currently humans.
Basically if you are too lazy to learn enough to not make such a childish mistake – why bother wasting anyone elses time in reading how ignorant you are?
Hi Bill. Good to have you back
I've been aware of this issue since the early 80's when I worked for a Physics Dept for some years. I played a tinsy little role in confirming the existence of the Great Oceanic Conveyor currents and one of my friends from that era is a bona fide climate scientist. I've spent years of my life working with infra-red instruments and I've read extensively of the more accessible literature on the topic. I'd certainly fall well short of being an expert of any kind, but I consider myself well informed and have a decent grasp of the many sciences involved. It's the story of my life, jack of all trades master of none 🙂
And I've been through every permutation imaginable of how one might reasonably, and unreasonably respond to this issue.
I've said this before, but it's central to the problem, so it stands repeating. There are 1 billion 'golden' people in the world who live modern developed middle class lifestyles. There are another 3 billion who have escaped poverty in the past two decades and have entered a basic middle class life and are rapidly gaining ground. There are another 3 billion or so who are closing in on this within the next two decades. The majority of people who live in absolute poverty are concentrated in just two countries, India and Nigeria.
The reason this is critical is two fold. People living in absolute poverty are terrible for their local environment, they deforest, overfish and eat anything they can catch. Getting them out of this state is essential.
The other bigger reason this is critical to understand, is that even if the so called 'golden one billion' in the developed world were to cut their resource consumption to zero, emit zero carbon from today onward, it would make only a marginal difference as the other developing six billion (and closer to nine billion if we count future growth) escape poverty and enter the modern world.
It is not ethically supportable to have a plan which demands the world's population of potentially nine billion people slide back into poverty. On that road lies certain destruction. The only path forward is to redesign our economies from the ground up, taking these planet scale natural cycles into account. There are a number of critical cycles involving water, carbon, nitrogen, calcium and more that for the first time in human history we now have a decent understanding of.
Since the Scientific Revolution we have passed through a number of energy phases, starting with coal, then oil and gas. We are now transitioning to renewables and next generation nuclear. In terms of materials, the big ones are concrete and steel, both will have to be transitioned to next generation materials, composites, carbon graphenes and the like. We are already transitioning industry to new highly efficient AI based production models. There is a huge amount of work being done to permit 100% recycling of resource streams, we will mine our old landfills, we will get all the plastic out of the ocean, we may even be able to extract excess CO2 from the atmosphere.
This will not avoid some very big impacts. There is already at least 1m of sea level rise baked in this century. There will be heat waves that render parts of earth unihabitable, there will be more droughts, cyclones and floods that will tip the scales and cause mass migrations toward the temperate regions. We have only seen the start of political instability caused by climate change. Yet we have, or soon will have, most of the tools we need to mitigate climate change and it's impacts. At a science and engineering level it is not only solveable, it's also a huge economic opportunity. As the next nine billion people on earth enter the middle class, they must leapfrog our current technologies and go straight to zero carbon, total recycling.
The barrier is political. Coal and oil have been essential tools to get us to this point, but we must now transition off them. This means we must stop subsidising them and prevent individual corporations and nations from cheating. This is a global problem in every sense of the word, the rules must be applied globally. China, USA, India, Russian and Germany represent more than half the total emissions of fossil CO2. Unless we compel them,and all other nations, to abide by the same rules, they will cheat.
The nation state works because we have agreed on rules and conventions that most people abide by. Anyone who cheats on them is punished. The same principle must now be applied at the next level up, climate change is a global problem that can only be effectively addressed with universal action.
Except people tend to rail against supranational organisations. You just have to witness the objections to the EU and even the UN by many nations. Your proposal requires an ability to deal with this type of opposition. Do you have any potential solutions?
Except people tend to rail against supranational organisations.
This is normal. Consider just the history of Europe and how the formation of the modern nations like Germany and France are the end result of hundreds of years of resistance and war. I am totally aware of why people feel like this; yet the nation states are entirely fabrications of the human mind. If we invented them, we can also modify them.
Ultimately the benefits of widening the scope of human cooperation outweigh the costs. Historically the process was bumpy and uneven because we didn't have a global perspective on it; now we can. Again for the first time in all of human history global governance is something that can be understood and is a realistic possibility.
And crucially the benefits are rapidly becoming obviously greater than the costs.
I have yet to see a proposal how global co-operation on the level you are proposing can be put in place anytime soon. The amount of sovereignty that would be required to be surrendered would be unprecedented and that is not going to fly with voters in many countries.
We have already gone through two major cycles of globalisation, one starting from around 1840 and ending catastrophically in 1914, the other starting in 1945 with the formation of the UN, World Bank, WTO, IMF and the like, and currently showing signs of dangerous stress.
There are massively important technical standards organisations which play a critical role enabling global trade, travel and communications. We have legal entities that prosecute war crimes, and numerous multilateral organisations, treaties and trade agreements that already encroach on the unconstrained sovereignty of the nation state far more than most people realise.
The reason why people are suspicious of globalisation and resistant to the idea, is not so much that it's a bad idea, it's because they don't have faith that it will be carried out properly. They reasonably conclude that the collectively the governments we have are pretty damned uninspiring, therefore a global government must be worse. My response is, the only thing worse than bad government is no government. In a global sense this is what we have, a poorly implemented, incoherent set of ad-hoc arrangements that have no underlying philosophy or rationale.
That may well be the case but just because you feel that is the case does not make it likely that enough people will agree with you and make the proactical steps to create this Global governance structure. It is relatively easy to attack a supranational organisation because it essentially can be painted as the outside "other" imposing the will of an out of touch elite on to society.
Why does Germany not disintegrate back into the tiny warlord states it was 400 years ago? Because the benefits of the wider nation state greatly exceed the costs.
It is relatively easy to attack a supranational organisation because it essentially can be painted as the outside "other" imposing the will of an out of touch elite on to society.
Which is why we need to think constructively about how to operate such a system, how to hold it to some form of credible democratic accountability. It's not an easy problem, but then nothing worth doing ever is.
Thanks RL, that's pretty much what I was working up the energy to write.
I'd add that we have the technology right now to get to a net-zero emissions world. Even to a slightly net-negative. What we lack is the political will to get there.
Part of the lack of political will comes from the conservative end of the political spectrum, who simply aren't of a personality type to accept the necessary disruptions for a zero-emissions world. Let alone embrace it. Which is kinda ironic, since the massive effort needed would actually be a massive economic booster worldwide, and conservatives are normally all for economic growth.
Part of the lack of political will comes from activists for particular causes that block small steps towards a better future and the grounds that that one small step isn't the solution. Sadly there is no single solution, there's only a huge long list of things that by themselves are only small improvements. Some of which will turn out to have unintended consequences that will also need to be dealt with.
To get to a better place, we're gonna need a wholesale bloodbath of sacred cows. Some of those sacred cows are opposition to technologies to as GMO, nuclear power etc that tend to be more popular on the left. Some of the sacred cows will be ideas popular among the right such as unfettered markets, maximising production and minimising capital investment and so on. Some of the sacred cows may even need to be a rethink around some ideas commonly held to be basic rights such as unlimited reproduction (although I really hope those can be achieved by shifting cultural norms rather than getting to the point where coercion becomes acceptable).
Yes, yes yes. This is exactly the thinking needed. Taking responsibility for our own sacred cows and positively framing the opportunities in terms that make sense to conservatives and progressives alike.
Keep in mind we need conservative people to maintain the existing systems essential to the transition. There is no point is promising zero carbon electricity in a decades time if the power goes off today.
We do for some of it. Concrete production would be hard to deal with at present.
But even if we do right now it still just means that we stop adding to the existing immense stockpile of CO2 in the oceans. And we have no viable technology paths to deal with that.
Remember that will keep popping out of the oceans at the tropics for thousands of years on centuries long ocean conveyors.
As is stands right now, even if everything stopped I would expect the long term sea levels rise to exceed the 30m over the next few centuries and the long term climatic stability that our current agriculture depends is just toast.
Yes that is true – the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is as "low" as it is because a huge part of what we have emitted is in the oceans. Prof Doug Mackie at Otago Uni did an excellent series on this on Skeptical Science some years back.
Here is one of his rebuttals to a common climate myth written in 2015
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-residence-time.htm
The continued acidification of the oceans is another environmental catastrophe we are simply not addressing, and yet it will have a serious impact on our survivability as well
Concrete production would be hard to deal with at present – because of the costs involved, not a lack of technologies to eliminate the CO2 emissions.
About half the emissions from current concrete production come from the calcination of limestone. This can be done in a closed chamber and the emitted CO2 easily captured and stored. Storage isn't quite so easy, but can be done by a variety of methods such as pumping it underground.
The other big contributor to CO2 emissions from concrete production is from burning fossil fuel for process heat. But that process heat could come from renewable energy. Again, it's a cost barrier, not a technological one.
Interestingly, over its lifetime concrete continuously reabsorbs CO2. After a long enough time, a piece of concrete will reabsorb a substantial fraction of the CO2 as was emitted during the calcination process for the cement used.
So if cement production changed to capturing and sequestering the CO2 emitted during calcination, and changed to getting the process heat from renewable electricity, then the concrete industry could change from being a large CO2 emitter to being a small and slow CO2 sink.
https://www.cement.org/for-concrete-books-learning/concrete-technology/concrete-design-production/concrete-as-a-carbon-sink yeah it's an industry puff piece, but it's backed up by more credible academic stuff that comes through as big pdfs so not ideal to link to them here.
Then there's all the ongoing efforts to make concrete with different chemistries and processes that don't require a CO2-emitting chemical process.
https://qz.com/1123875/the-material-that-built-the-modern-world-is-also-destroying-it-heres-a-fix/
and then theres the transport part of the equation…extracting the lime, moving it to be processed, packaged and again transported to be mixed and further transported to location of use…theres a recurring theme.
The land transport part of it all is probably going to be the first to get fully electrified. With renewables.
I'm still picking that when sea transport has to go zero-emissions, it'll be with small modular nukes.
heavy industry/transport is further away than electric transport (if even feasible at scale)….how much time do you think we have?
It's not a question of how much time we have – we're already fucked.
The question we're facing now is in how many orifices simultaneously and how bad the fucking is going to get. The decisions we make now can have a big influence on that.
then it may pay to be realistic….not all energy is equal….the energy from electricity will not replace the dense mobile energy of oil…..so it may pay to start realising that aside from anything else we cannot substitute, we must reduce…and crucially we must prioritise
From the perspective of not all energy is equivalent, burning fossil fuel to turn it into mechanical or electrical energy is incredibly wasteful of the chemical energy in the fuel.
The petrol engine drivetrain in a car turns maybe 20% of the input chemical energy into useful forward motion. Diesel trucks maybe 35%. Huntly turns maybe 40% of the coal or gas chemical energy into electricity (maybe 55% in its one combined cycle gas unit). A big ship might get to 50%.
But a battery electric vehicle will turn 80% to 90% of its input electrical energy into useful motion. That's before considering energy recovery from regenerative braking, which can be very significant for rubbish trucks, buses, cars in stop-go traffic etc.
But when fossil fuels are burned for process heat, almost all the input chemical energy ends up as useful heat.
So from that perspective, the low-hanging fruit is more likely to be in electrifying transport and other users of internal combustion engines. With process heat users changing later on. But that picture is partly muddied by the way electrical heating is generally a lot safer and more controllable than burning fuels. The industrial oopsies involving process heat that I've been near have involved burning fuels rather than electrical heat.
Currently around 13% of world energy demand is met by non carbon emitting technologies (in their operation, not their construction) so a near 8 fold increase in carbon free electricity production will be needed just to stand still (not counting energy loss from battery storage etc) and then there is environmental/resource constraints…and in the foreseeable construction of any infrastructure requires the use of massive amounts of carbon emitting fossil fuels….breeders are not a reality and may never be…the individual efficiencies are not the issue.
Oh well then. If the problem is that insurmountable you may as well just assume the position now and kiss your ass goodbye.
Meanwhile those that want ways to make things better will keep beavering away, with greater or lesser support from those that want to improve things and opposition from those that want to keep pushing their own barrows.
it is always of interest when those touting technology as a solution fall back to the"you have given up" line in pique when the point being made is not to give up but to stop dreaming and start realising that our high energy/consumption lifestyles cannot be maintained and reality dictates reduction.
Realisation will come at some point, the later the more damage
Kinda like the way those using climate change as a stalking horse for a separate agenda first fall back on "how much time is left" then "the problem is too big for anything other than my solution".
Improvements will come from taking things that work from the entire spectrum of possibilities.
lol…you may claim stalking horses and hidden agendas….me, I'll stick with the facts.
Which is pretty much my basic point as well. Except I’d say that what we are determining now is not what happens to people living now – it is more a case of how much more fucked our descendents next century will be.
It is so damn hard to reverse out VERY large amounts of CO2 already dropped into the oceans and due to reappear within decades or centuries (probably mostly the latter).
As far as I can see we’re not even seeing more than a trace of what has already been applied to us from last century. I suspect that a lot of what we are seeing in the atmosphere now is just from the reducing ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 …
I think leapfrogging third-first world entirely feasible.
Permaculture. Earthworks, solar, wind, hydro, food forests, BAM, good life.
And yes, those new reactors don’t look nearly so bad as the old ones. The old ones… NIMBY!
Talking to clued-up Turkish chap today. Touching on the Ottoman Empire, early 20th century. The Turks were able to hold Muslims together, now acting against each other. (Don't start on Armenia, this is just a general look at the world divisions prior to WW1.) He says that after WW1 Turkey was left alone after losing all the countries previously connected with it then. Turkey was the only democracy and had stepped away from sharia law. He feels that Turkey is more stable than NZ and offers better conditions for work and education.
Now where the Ottoman Empire extended, there are lots of states at odds with each other, separated and there needs to be some cohesiveness rather like the EU. Perhaps there could be a Balkan united entity that would be similar to the EU.
I think it would be harder to pick off countries and destroy them physically and culturally if there was a group identity.
We're all talking about climate change.
Welcome back Bill.
Some notepad calculating:
13.5 billion acres of agricultural land.
Improvements to retain water and fertility can increase carbon sequestration by ~ 0.16 ton of carbon per acre (on grassland) in relation to typical practice (plough and erode). Forestry is higher, but fires can decimate progress. Forests will need to be better planned than current practise due to increasing drought/wildfire.
But yeah, improving agricultural lands will only sequester a further ~ 2.16 billion tons per annum. This does not account for reducing the oil based machinery, fertilisers and pesticides currently used.
Fully restorative agriculture (animal and plant cycling, nitrogen fixing plants, no till) could improve that figure considerably.
You say we have an excess of ~ 1 trillion tons CO2? That's only 400 years for very basically improved agriculture to sop it up.
Regreening the deserts will give a much larger return (improvement on current sequestration levels), but will only be feasible in some places. It might bring us down to two hundred years.
Large scale reef building could also help, and kelp forests walk all over terrestrial systems for CO2 sequestering (about 20x). The oceans take the bulk of the earths surface area but shallow water (where the benthos/some surface area for things to grow on is in the euphotic zone, or upper 80m) is only a portion of that. How big a portion – can't find the number…
I do see kelp farming and reef building will take off once we get our heads round how beneficial it can be (industry and restorative practise). I wish I could get that number – if we could have as much kelp forest/oysters building reefs as we do Ag land – reverse all that excess in a couple of decades.
Bad agricultural practises (and land use in general) are killing off aquatic ecosystems that are highly important global players.
So, we start with cleaning up Ag, forestry and other land users, this in turn aids oceanic restoration. We plant (mixed) forests, we restore grasslands, we green deserts, we seed reefs and kelp forests.
We get cracking.
It's possible to turn this shebang around. But daunting!
1:08 on…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0pQqJyN_-M
Agreed. I have always instinctively had one foot in each camp, the engineering one and the natural systems one. It would be a terrible mistake to set one against the other … they both must play their optimum role.
Fortunately it's my sense that the younger generations of life sciences people understand this better than we do and will naturally tend to merge the two approaches into a broad stream of multiple disciplines.
Besides there is every good reason to experiment with all reasonable options.
At university they were beginning to mouth accolades about multi-disciplinary work but they were still trying hard to jam everyone into their box.
Multi-disciplinary individuals are relatively rare, but it is improving as some protean types are refusing to be boxed anymore.
I agree we'll require all hands on deck, I can only really speak to the biological/ecological side of it, but I can contribute from cetaceans to cyanobacteria…
I've got an idea for multi-disciplinary but will have to stop brooding on it otherwise it will never hatch. I agree that we have to bring skills and knowledge together to make up the magic positions that will save much of the earth and civilisation. Big sounding themes. But too real man for words. Don't worry Be Happy. Maybe we can do good and at the same time have some fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU
Give me purposeful work I'm laughing all day. Leave me feeling hopeless it aint pretty.
The touring company, it has ulterior motives, to talk about climate change in every town we go – with jokes!
Besides transport what would expedite, help you, in this project WtB? What if NZ Rail would strike a bargain with you and give you cheaper rail in exchange for you advertising their services even unfolding major sized posters encouraging its use. It is time we use every new idea that we can to get the country moving on tracks literally and figuratively.
I had considered rail. I still recall the idea of a rail tour and shows on the way. A workshop idea we had. Still a great idea and something I might put together in future. Till then we just need to get rolling.
The issue is transporting sound gear as well as artists. This is heavy equipment I can't just chuck on the back of an e-bike. I have looked at e-bike trailers and all sorts of options but really, artists and equipment need door to door (home to venue to hotel to next venue…) service. Especially in inclement weather.
I will work it out there's not too much detail to it now.
Here was a production I was very familiar with:
http://www.theatrescenes.co.nz/review-kalopsia-sky-frank-creation-theatre/
Sounds a bit like what you have in mind.
I do enjoy a show at the basement.
That shows material sounds really interesting – challenging to present.
I'll just be presenting stand up and other stand up comics which is easy to set up.
My favorite play I worked on was probably Priscilla. Great cast, crew, lots of heavy work though, as we had to reinforce the stage for the bus.
Priscilla would have been great fun to work on I would think. And yes getting a bus on stage would have been an undertaking!
Production is just as essential as the rest but for much of the audience it is something that can be seen but never fully appreciated.
Bill – you are a heroic figure whatever your size. Glad to see you back and giving us the dope. Without the opportunity to read and ruminate about such things as you and lprent reveal we will stay dopes.
And Bill has been telling us for a while – the three past posts featured at the base of his present one are from him. 2014 Idiots Cowards and Bastards (very catchy),
2016 Free Petrol – apparently part of a series, and 2018 something about Chremastatic or something. Plenty to read and I think we owe it to Bill to ingest the message he conveys.
Readers of The Standard; I could use your help. In a few days time, I will be pressing the Southland Regional Council (Environment Southland) to declare a 'climate emergency' as Environment Canterbury, The Nelson City Council and Dunedin City Council have done. There is reluctance amongst my fellow councillors to do this but they are subject to influence from the public, so I ask, could you email the chairman Nicol Horrell and press him to lead the council into declaring a climate emergency. You'll have your own reasons to give, no doubt, but it needs only be a short message; such input really has a powerful effect, especially when cited at the point when voting on an issue is concerned. The address is:
Nicol.Horrell@es.govt.nz
Thank you.
Done.
Many thanks.
Also Robert.
I'm very grateful for your help, greywarshark.
Oh you might also be interested in this post on Dennis Teggs blog
https://teggtalk.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/sea-level-rise-coastal-hazard-planning-begins-in-thames-coromandel/
I'll mention the need to get emails down your way fast at our local get together here tomorrow.
Thank you very much, Macro.
Aren't those regional councillors shills for Dirty Dairying, Robert?
All the more reason to press them to do something worthwhile, Morrisey
Good on you, Robert!
Spot on Bill – tautoko with equal desperation.
https://zeroenergyhouse.co.nz/
We can build houses that produce energy already. I'm going to be visiting this exact place next weekend. Yay.
Video…
https://zeroenergyhouse.co.nz/energy/
Drought and assorted weather related catastrophes cause mass migration, political upheaval and ultimately, war. Sounds about right.
A harrowing scenario analysis of how human civilization might collapse in coming decades due to climate change has been endorsed by a former Australian defense chief and senior royal navy commander.
The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, a think-tank in Melbourne, Australia, describes climate change as “a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization” and sets out a plausible scenario of where business-as-usual could lead over the next 30 years.
The paper argues that the potentially “extremely serious outcomes” of climate-related security threats are often far more probable than conventionally assumed, but almost impossible to quantify because they “fall outside the human experience of the last thousand years.”
On our current trajectory, the report warns, “planetary and human systems [are] reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order.”
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/597kpd/new-report-suggests-high-likelihood-of-human-civilization-coming-to-an-end-in-2050
I suggest it will lead to the breakdown of local order too. Things may be tough, you are assiduously planting, mulching, watering, picking off bugs from the plants that will be your main sustenance.
Then the sort of guys that think it is okay to rape young girls because they can and nobody wants to confront them, start early morning raids and coming home with vegs for their accepting females who do the cooking and care work. You have to put out warning tin-cans on strings, and have a shotgun to keep them off. That would show up the feral nature of much of the so-called civilisation we have already a significant number of which is unwilling to live in a sharing, respectful, communal and fair-trading way.
I grow a lot of plants people wouldn't recognise as food. May I get many more
And growing my own food takes so little effort (after set up). Less than a couple of minutes a day if that. Heavy mulching is key which requires growing support species to provide mulch (along with all non-edible plant parts of harvested materials).
Robert’s got it sussed, but I don’t think you can get production running quickly with plant and watch…. Best to block out weeds agressively, put in the trees but run annuals between them to get a harvest. Start eating healthy, it’s on!
Make beautiful food and watch the trees grow. Superb.
I hope and pray it will be as easy to grow as you say. The answer lies in the mulch it seems.
The mulch does many useful things, but in this context it gives desirable plants a (significant) chance to get going without the need for poisons or ploughs. As the season progresses it starts to break down and you begin to build topsoil out of it. Lovely.
Have compost on hand and make wee holes in new mulch and add a handful of compost and then plant veg to get going fast.
It has been observed, using a sample size of one, that Dan Carter in his undies promotes conversation on climate change. I think we should make Dan an ambassador of climate change, and trot him out for a countrywide underpants tour.
Whatever it takes, we all have to make sacrifices.
Who is Dan Carter and why is he significant?
I don't really know. I do know the photos I have of him in a family members house in his undies got the internet in conniptions 😀
Ransom 1 Tesla.
He is a Kalahari Bushman who happened to be snapped in his underpants stalking a warthog and went onto global fame as an underpants model
All his practice throwing baby warthogs came in handy later, though did nothing for the climate.
As the Scotsman said, "There's nothing worn under this kilt!"
Or: "Is there anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order."
More Milligan:
https://dysonology.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/the-guy-quote-spike-milligan/
Is this going to be a good thing to do with plastics or is it going to have downsides?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/391439/new-plymouth-s-plastic-turned-into-roading-asphalt
It's hoped the test of a new blend of asphalt – Plas Mix – will offer a solution for the thousands of tonnes of difficult to recycle plastic grades – three through seven – collected in New Zealand each year.
New Plymouth District Council infrastructure manager David Langford said after finding himself stuck with about 200 tonnes annually of plastics nobody wanted, he started looking around for solutions.
If the plastic is in the surface layer it's not good. If it's buried out of the light it can last forever. Reads article… It's in the aggregate. I like it (with caution).
I do recall considering this type of construction for swamp/peatland which we have a lot of in the Waikato. My idea was to have roads that 'float' rather than the existing huge maintenance/rapid misshaped dangerous mess we get. Perhaps we could have a high plastic aggregate for such terrain. Great that people are receptive to such ideas all of a sudden.
We pay too much for new roads, I want them to actually last. That's another story which I'm sure our resident rail fans could expand on way better than me.
That article made me miss Pukekura Park. I wrote a lot sitting on top of the crest of the hill that almost overhangs the North boundary of the lake. Magic fungi growing right there under the bench I wrote from.
Sounds great WtB. I haven't been to Womad and seen the rhodos or been to Parihaka but will get there some day. Seen Lye's wand and briefly at Govett-Brewster and the 'Snug' at the White Hart. So had a taste of Taranaki.
It isn't too bad. Takes a lot of work to get asphalt to burn
WB Bill….thanks for an accurate summary but suspect your desired honesty is the last thing that will happen….at least in the short term.
Hello Bill, really great to see you back, was just saying to a friend how I missed your input on TS a couple of days ago.
Look forward to having a little more balance around here.
A one day strike, ffs.
A week would be better!
Dear Media, please would you start spotlighting the companies that cause the most environmental damage so everyone can be informed about which products to boycott.
Here’s a start….
https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/18876/these-10-companies-are-flooding-the-planet-with-throwaway-plastic/
Dear Cinny, most of us won't because our companies own the media.
An interesting interview re: China's re-greening the Gobi Desert. Climate change, climate refugees… 66 Billion trees so far (end of 2017).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSn6S-H7m-8
It might be better if we could plant food forests of trees and people living nearby would have the trees for their own use and trade with other tree groups in each group's season. They would be kaitiaki of the trees and land, grow crops under, and have a basic sufficiency. Rather than rows on rows of plantation forest even to green the desert. At the sides of a road like the above, at regular intervals, there could be little villages that acted as kaitiaki and lookouts to put out small fires, and able to call on a big local firefighting force.
I doubt any food trees of value will grow there at present. Once the system begins to mature they might start including them. Those will be mostly deep tap rooting nitrogen fixers and drought tolerant species of local origin.
We can plant food straight off because we have topsoil. Even then a lot of productive trees struggle without other species or mycorrhizal hookups or shelter or shade…
The Loess plateau project went straight to production but by vastly different methods. I'll share a video tomorrow that's quite uplifting, at least to me.