science

Categories under science

Australia’s Omicron problem

Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, January 6th, 2022 - 132 comments

Mike Hosking Covid Australia

With over 61,000 new Covid cases reported yesterday Australia is in the midst of an infection surge that it has not seen before.  What lessons can New Zealand learn from Australia’s handling of the pandemic?

New Year. Good News.

Written By: - Date published: 5:43 pm, January 1st, 2022 - 92 comments

This one goes out to all those good people running round like their hair’s on fire.

Hope Punk 2022

Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, January 1st, 2022 - 11 comments

Here’s a kind of map to a future where things work out.

A few random predictions for 2022

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, January 1st, 2022 - 117 comments

A few random predictions for 2022.

Our Energy Upheaval

Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, December 23rd, 2021 - 79 comments

Ministers Wood, Shaw and Parker (Energy, Climate Change, and RMA reform respectively), must pull their eyes downward from the misty clouds of climate change and stuff multiple decades away and down into the jagged, shadowy deal-by-deal path of the transition to clean energy.

Can Labor Win Australia Back?

Written By: - Date published: 1:07 pm, December 21st, 2021 - 37 comments

Coming up surprising quickly in 2022 is the Australian federal election – and Labor has a good shot.

He Waka Eke Noa?

Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, November 24th, 2021 - 14 comments

While a core of farmers protested a few days ago against farm environmental regulation with long lines of tractors, the organised form of agribusiness, Maori and government working together have concluded that making a climate different isn’t possible.

COP26 Results

Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, November 14th, 2021 - 15 comments

The deal is done. Together with lots of side-agreements, big-up pledges, finance, and no definite language the phasing out of Coal or fossil fuel subsidies.

New Zealand’s New Low Carbon Economy Stays Difficult

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, November 7th, 2021 - 36 comments

Southland Mayor Gary Tong has justified felling a forest to construct a coal mine by saying “[w]e all want to make a cleaner, greener planet, but we can’t do it in five minutes.”

The Rules To Save The World

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, November 4th, 2021 - 7 comments

Beyond the NGO emotion and singing and joyous arm waving, country leaders at COP 26 actually have to achieve stuff this week.

Alt COP26: “Get in line or get out of the way”

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, November 2nd, 2021 - 30 comments

Climate solutions are coming from Indigenous peoples and other system thinkers who are deeply connected with nature, not the neoliberal diehards who treat nature as a grab bag of resources to be manipulated.

COP26 is on

Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, November 1st, 2021 - 39 comments

The show is now on for Conference of Parties 26 (COP 26), where countries show each other how they will achieve the Paris Agreement climate goals. How will we do? Set in Glasgow, it will bring together negotiators from nearly every country on earth to assess progress, and to determine the scale of sacrifice we’re […]

The Entrust election debacle

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, October 31st, 2021 - 56 comments

National aligned C&R has shown how bad it is at running elections by running an election where less than one in ten eligible people voted.

Auckland Light rail options released

Written By: - Date published: 8:09 am, October 29th, 2021 - 23 comments

Construction of light rail in Auckland, proposed 50 years ago by former Mayor Dove Myer Robinson, is now a step close with the release of working group recommendations for options of a light rail line running between the city centre and the Airport.

Greenpeace: More trains, less planes, mobility for all

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, October 28th, 2021 - 57 comments

Greenpeace International calls on Europe to shift from airflight to train travel. What would the New Zealand version look like?

Why Can’t We Do More?

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, October 16th, 2021 - 35 comments

The Government’s dramatic action taken over the past 18 months to respond to Covid and the population’s overwhelming support suggests that it should be taking similar drastic action to address poverty and climate change.

Chevron v Donziger

Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, October 9th, 2021 - 12 comments

Despite spending over two years on home detention Attorney Steven Donziger, who successfully sued Chevron for the environmental carnage caused by its activities in Ecuador, was sentenced to the maximum jail time for refusing to hand over devices containing confidential client information protected by attorney client privilege in a prosecution mounted by lawyers with Chevron links before a pro Oil industry Judge.

Priorities?

Written By: - Date published: 7:54 pm, October 3rd, 2021 - 16 comments

Is setting priorities just a matter of resources?

China, Australia, and Coal Energy

Written By: - Date published: 8:25 am, October 1st, 2021 - 31 comments

China, which previously banned coal imports from Australia, is running out of coal.  Will Australia uses the resumption of coal supply as a diplomatic play?

Fearmongering or telling it how it is?

Written By: - Date published: 5:14 pm, September 25th, 2021 - 29 comments

42 is not the meaning of life and 13 is not an unlucky number.

Where Is The Real Green Party?

Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, September 17th, 2021 - 48 comments

Where’s the hairy knuckle-dragging woke when you need them?

Hospo resilience: pairing covid response and climate action

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, September 8th, 2021 - 13 comments

We’re now in the time of synchronous and overlapping crises. With Delta Level Two and ongoing restrictions affecting the hospitality sector, and eighteen months into our covid response, solutions need to be for the long haul. One of the keys to that is positive adaptation.

Down With Farmer Bashing

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, August 13th, 2021 - 126 comments

A Guest Post by DB Brown on how and why regenerative stock grazing matters ecologically, and where best to place our anger about climate change.

Ways out of the climate catastrophe

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, August 10th, 2021 - 130 comments

As the IPCC drops its grim, damning report on humans and climate change, and as we are surrounded by social and mainstream media narratives of disaster, we desperately need cogent and hopeful visions of where we can go next, and stories of futures where things work out.

What if saving the world meant life was tasty, beautiful and just long enough?

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 am, August 4th, 2021 - 22 comments

The nasty, brutish and short meme is a failure of the imagination. We can have less and still live good lives.

The latest Reid Research Poll result

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, August 2nd, 2021 - 134 comments

Last night’s Reid Research poll result suggests that the electorate is reverting back to a more conventional dynamic after the stratospheric heights that Labour enjoyed immediately post Covid elimination.

Why isn’t govt hitting utes much harder?

Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, July 26th, 2021 - 51 comments

Aotearoa has been super sizing its vehicle fleet for over a decade and given Jacinda Ardern claim that Climate Change as her generation’s nuclear-free moment, why is her government not smacking ute owners and other gas guzzlers much harder than the just the feebate? Large vehicles increase climate change and wild weather. Fringe Benefit tax is payable on them and usually not collected. Plus they are deadly dangerous to pedestrians and other vehicles.

Keep the faith, deep greenies

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, July 22nd, 2021 - 75 comments

For those that understand the cyclical, interconnected nature of reality and why growth is inherently limited in the physical world, kia kaha, we’re making headway.

Mother Nature gives Groundswell NZ the middle finger

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 am, July 20th, 2021 - 78 comments

With record floods in Marlborough, half of Westport evacuated, disastrous flooding in Germany and the North East and the threat of record bushfires in the North West of the United States Mother Nature is passing rather cruel judgment on Groundswell NZ’s recent protest.

Why Not Support The Farmers?

Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, July 17th, 2021 - 106 comments

The Groundswell farmers movement want the new freshwater policy scrapped, the “ute tax” removed, lots of imported labour for farm work, parts of the ETS dumped the new Significant Natural Area policy dumped, the draft policy on indigenous biodiversity scrapped and Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill stopped.  How likely is this?

If a thousand baby flamingos die in the desert does anyone hear them howl?

Written By: - Date published: 3:06 pm, July 16th, 2021 - 43 comments

Farmers aren’t the problem here, they’re the mirror New Zealand is holding up to itself. We say we want change, despite the evidence.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.