“It’s abundantly clear we have to embark on deep change so we can achieve the biggest goal humankind has ever attempted. It is not to save the planet. It will survive – even if we don’t. It will adapt as it has to previous geological eras. Over tens of millions of years vastly different life-forms and ecosystems will evolve, ones shaped by prevailing conditions.
Our goal has to be to save ourselves. To do so we must give this ecosystem that gives us life the best chance it has to recover, and to continue to support us.”
Great. Anybody who accepts this(and I do ) must also accept that Capitalism, as we know it, will have to go. Capitalism is incompatible with saving the Planet.
Capitalism and consumerism as societal values and economic structures have to be defanged, declawed, and relegated to being nothing more than a minor feature of daily life.
Capitalism and consumerism as societal values and economic structures have to be defanged, declawed, and relegated to being nothing more than a minor feature of daily lifehistorical oddity.
Well, I think there is still a place for some inter-community scale, family store scale capitalism, as well as local models of self financing, but we may differ on that point.
na capitalism is just a man made tool , and like all tools if you have the right safegaurds it can be useful, it’s just that we have let the greedy use it for their purposes .
yes but with strong government it could be taken back and used just as a tool or system to get things done.
By this i mean something like.
The eu decides that all packaging will have to be biodegradable in ten years,
now some will winge , some will say it’s undoable , but some good little capitalist will see an opportunity and go to work trying to corner the market.
Two major things destroy this planet: 1/ far too many people 2/ every one of those wants what the neighbor has.
No matter what system you put in place – theoretically soviets Marxist system should have brought equal equilibrium for all but it didn’t – it is human nature that actually gets in the way. We are wired to destroy and not to build despite what some would like to belief. This is what we have to accept and learn to negotiate, our true nature. No one can say that they haven’t cotton on and by how far all is deteriorated, I would not hold my breath and unfortunately humanity will only learn when it gets a huge head clip to remind them that we are just a blip on the radar of the cosmos.
1) The richest 10% of people in the western world consume 60% of the world’s resources. This is not a question of “far too many people.” It is a question of the a few hundred million people in the rich west eating the rest of the world.
2) The only people who “wants what the neighbour has” are those who have learnt to greed, venality, jealousy and covetousness. I don’t want a yacht like my neighbour has and I don’t want a new HSV like my other neighbour has. You may think that that most people are basically venal, but perhaps that is simply only most people around your circles.
Your comments are always from the perspective that is angry and almost hateful. When you do that it becomes personal without having any grounds or indeed facts to support that. So I try to explain this differently:
1/ too many people – lets look at this globally. The greed (I want what my neighbor has) is destroying the forest and with that the reservoir for rain water exchange in the atmosphere. This in turn leads to droughts and the arable land that is available gets overused. If this continues the land we can use to feed us all will diminish even further and with that the means of sustaining the many people and growing population. Scientists have opened the Pandora’s box of gen modification and this will most likely increase the impasse in the future. We see the bees and pollinators dying already. Water: as we have seen in Hawks bay recently, water contamination will increase as aquifers are being contaminated because it is not enough to have a few cattle, it has to be more. The ground water is pumped and the lower the water table the more likely salination and contamination will occur.
2/ It is this “more” that will be humanity’s undoing.
Nature will be a great equalizer in that game of survival. This is not about money, this is about a finite world that cannot sustain an ever increasing population worldwide. I
If we wouldn’t be here, I doubt that any animal or plant would miss us. Some might be jubilant….
I agree with you Foreign Waka but what always does amuse me is – do the 10% honestly think once they have brought about complete planet collapse, that they will be able to start afresh from their bunkers or what ever and have the capacity to start again. That they cannot see that it will be their undoing as well, is just is too ridiculous for words but they are quite prepared to go over the cliff with the rest of us just for the sake of more consuming and greed. It’s like they are happy to take on a death wish for it all to occur.
I suppose in their utter selfishness they just think “well our generation will all be dead so what the hell”. Don’t they have grandchildren to have a thought for their futures and the carnage as society breaks down, that they will face.
The people who do care in this world are hopelessly powerless against the filthy rich of this world who can buy and control countries at will.
Good capitalism is an oxymoron – the model is exploitive, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but always with some, therefore it is no good. Assuming you don’t like exploitation that is.
Capitalism is neither good nor bad .we need a system to get things done , and capitalism gets things done, it just needs balancing with strong government a watchful eye and a good bit of socialism .
“Capitalism is neither good nor bad .we need a system to get things done , and capitalism gets things done, it just needs balancing with strong government a watchful eye and a good bit of socialism .”
Or shorter: Democratic Socialism. I’m a big fan of the Nordic Model.
I am nonetheless amused at CV’s opining on Capitalism while being a Trump supporter. Cognative dissonance is strong with him (or her)
aah I’ve wondered what my political label would be , it would appear that at this stage i am a democratic socialist. Which nz party fits the bill most do you think?
I wondered recently if I was right enough in perceiving a certain leakage in the levees that shore up ‘business as usual’. The first inkling came from the Guardian in a piece that not only directly quoted eminent scientists in the field expressing fairly deep misgivings about our present position and direction, but questioned this whole notion of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Previously that’s just been taken as a read by the likes of the Guardian.
And I do like that Rod characterises the need for radical action as an “adventure”…
I was at a workshop at which Rod facilitated the discussion around action on Climate Change yesterday. Rod has been active in this area for some years now. I am not surprised with his comments. He certainly understands that the economy is a subset of the environment not the other way round.
Pathetic ! On Q+A Corin Dan giving Parata the sweetest platform, like a paid ‘pretend’ interviewer. It’s disgraceful really. He just sits there watching Parata go all ‘aspirational’. FFS !
Halfcrown i used too watch Q+A when it first started and even though the late Paul Holmes was the host and always could be relied upon too give the left a good kick i stuck with it because there was no other in depth political coverage at the time.
As the media has moved away from unbiased coverage in favour of the right wing perspective Q+ A has regrettably gone the same way.
Corrin Dann indulges anyone from the government side but watch him change into a nasty scowling arrogant monster when its anyone from the left, its real hatred and i dont know why anyone from the left of politics would want to appear to be treated this way and its the viewer who wants too be informed that misses out because Dann wont allow the victim too talk and get their point across basicly its just bloody bullying.
It just angers up the blood so i dont watch any of them and have pleasant no stress Sunday as god intended.
Campbell had Key worked and looked what happened to him.
Corin Dann knows what happens to independent media people.
Paula Penfold.
John Campbell.
Jon Stephenson.
Nicky Hager.
When extremists like red delusion and ‘man in the middle’ ( never knew Genghis Khan , Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini were men in the middle) rant on about Venezuela and North Korea, maybe they should look at the state of our own media.
Open the curtains it’s a lovely day outside Paul, stop wallowing in negativity on your PC, we all have google search thus your cut and pastes while admirable from a quantitative perspective and effort is not really required
Live updates of the penultimate day of the Rio Olympics.
‘Just Bledi Awful’ – Aussie’s reaction
Girl who killed her own family set free (Canadian crime story)
‘Righto, we need to take this to the police’ (the Herald appears more concerned about the All Blacks being spied on than the whole country)
KFC’s secret recipe uncovered
All Blacks v Australia: Player ratings
Revealed: The best and worst airline food
Cold case mystery: Is he still alive? (Australian crime story)
Who is the lucky punter who won $13.3m?
Could Hamblin win rare Olympic medal?
The poisoning of 4000 New Zealand citizens?
Not as important.
More wins for the All Blacks and less money and support for the grassroots.
More medals at Olympics and less participation in sport.
Olympic swimmers. Closing school polls.
Shhhhhhh mate is their any joy in your life , suggestion stop bringing every thing back to partisan politics Just enjoy something for enjoyment sake, as the say accentuate the positive it could be life changing for you
Sport is over emphasised , overglorified and overpaid.
In the days when everyone was a sportsmen
Back then, worn out tennis balls would mysteriously appear in the gutters of our street. Finding one of these little beauties could mean only one thing: it was time for a street cricket match.
Kids’ names were called out and pretty soon you had enough players to start a game. While the batsmen, bowlers and the wicketkeeper were definitely human, most of the fieldsmen were drawn from the vast throng of free-range neighbourhood dogs.
How long does it take for a new graft on an established tree to fruit? For an Apple tree? Pears? Plums? Cherry? (I’m guessing plums and cherries are sooner).
A graft “takes” quickly, days or weeks, depending on the type of graft. I do a simple cleft graft that binds more slowly, as it’s done at the end of winter and moves with the rise of the sap. Bud grafts are done when things are cranking, and take a shorter time. In any case, grafting fruit-bearing scions onto decorative trees is fun and funny.
Fifty years ago the Gurindji people walked off Lord Vesty’s Northern Territory Wave Hill station.
.
Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this article contains images, voices and names of deceased people.
Fifty years ago, the Gurindji people of the Northern Territory made their name across Australia with the 1966 Wave Hill Walk-Off.
It was a landmark event that inspired national change: equal wages for Aboriginal workers, as well as a new Land Rights Act.
Although it took another two decades, the Gurindji also became one of the first Aboriginal groups to reclaim their traditional lands.
Many people know a small part of the walk-off story because of the song From Little Things, Big Things Grow about 200 stockmen, house servants and their families who walked off Wave Hill Station on 23 August 1966, in protest at appalling pay and living conditions.
But what is not widely known is that the walk-off followed more than 80 years of massacres and killings, stolen children and other abuses by early colonists.
Vincent Lingiari introduces the recording in his language, which he then translates into English.
My name is Vincent Lingiari, came from Daruragu, Wattie Creek station.
That means that I came down here to ask all these fella here about the land rights. What I got story from my old father or grandfather that land belongs to me, belongs to Aboriginal men before the horses and the cattle come over on that land where I am sitting now. That is what I have been keeping on my mind and I still got it on my mind. That is all the words I can tell you.
‘Gurindji Blues’
Poor bugger me, Gurindji
My name is Vincent Lingiari, came from Daruragu, Wattie Creek station.
Me bin sit down this country
Long time before the Lord Vestey
Allabout land belongin’ to we
Oh poor bugger me, Gurindji.
Poor bugger blackfeller; Gurindji
Long time work no wages, we,
Work for the good old Lord Vestey
Little bit flour; sugar and tea
For the Gurindji, from Lord Vestey
Oh poor bugger me.
Poor bugger me, Gurindji,
Man called Vincent Lingiari
Talk long allabout Gurindji
‘Daguragu place for we,
Home for we, Gurindji:
But poor bugger blackfeller, Gurindji
Government boss him talk long we
‘We’ll build you house with electricity
But at Wave Hill, for can’t you see
Wattie Creek belong to Lord Vestey’
Oh poor bugger me.
Poor bugger me, Gurindji
Up come Mr: Frank Hardy
ABSCHOL too and talk long we
Givit hand long Gurindji
Buildim house and plantim tree
Longa Wattie Creek for Gurindji
But poor bugger blackfeller Gurindji
Government Law him talk long we
‘Can’t givit land long blackfeller, see
Only spoilim Gurindji’
Oh poor bugger me.
Poor bugger me, Gurindji
Peter Nixon talk long we:
‘Buy you own land, Gurindji
Buyim back from the Lord Vestey’
Oh poor bugger me, Gurindji.
Poor bugger blackfeller Gurindji
Suppose we buyim back country
What you reckon proper fee?
Might be flour, sugar and tea
From the Gurindji to Lord Vestey?
Oh poor bugger me.
Oh ngaiyu luyurr ngura-u
Sorry my country, Gurindji.
Regretfully Joe – it isn’t much better even today. The billions of dollars that are “invested” in the indigenous people of Australia mainly ends up in State administration and people getting rich at the expense of those who really need it. The land on which aboriginal communities live is State owned – not the peoples – as are the houses and all the facilities. The first aborigine ,albert namatjirato be granted Australian citizenship was in 1957.
Read a beautiful book about Aboriginal culture recently… really moving
Mutant Message Down Under is the fictional account of an American woman’s spiritual odyssey through outback Australia. An underground bestseller in its original self-published edition, Marlo Morgan’s powerful tale of challenge and endurance has a message for us all.
Summoned by a remote tribe of nomadic Aborigines to accompany them on walkabout, the woman makes a four-month-long journey and learns how they thrive in natural harmony with the plants and animals that exist in the rugged lands of Australia’s bush. From the first day of her adventure, Morgan is challenged by the physical requirements of the journey—she faces daily tests of her endurance, challenges that ultimately contribute to her personal transformation.
By traveling with this extraordinary community, Morgan becomes a witness to their essential way of being in a world based on the ancient wisdom and philosophy of a culture that is more than 50,000 years old.
Policies are not the only basis upon which voters cast their votes.
Overall credibility, able to bring along a team, general fiscal prudence, impact on rates, capability of the incumbent all bear upon the voters choice.
Fiscal prudence like a great big fuck off convention centre and rugby stadium? Or fiscal prudence involving buying up tracts of prime central city land in order to prop up land prices artificially for the governments mates? Or the environmentally prudent moves by ECan to allow shitty farmers to steal all the good water?
Democracy has failed in Canterbury, destroyed by the disaster capitalists and abetted by that waste of space Brownlee
If Minto fails to win but still performs well (making it a close race) it will send a shiver up the spine of the establishment. As it will indicate the tide is turning.
The canary used to alert miners of the presence of noxious gases. It has since become a metaphor for truth tellers in a dangerous world. We talk to the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Canary – the newest arrival in Britain’s online journalism – Kerry-Anne Mendoza.
Yeah well, what’s that quote (from some US official?) on how friends are chosen by dint of what it is that is wanting to be achieved, and not on grounds of how good or bad, or right or wrong they may be?
I’ve no doubt ‘The Guardian’ and others will do a huge mea-culpa over their ‘Boy in an Ambulance’ story and earnestly seek to redress any “rush to war” sentiments that their coverage may have produced.
Labour MP Kelvin Davies has gone public about his role in helping a mentally ill man and argues it shows a need for better services.
“I stopped a guy from killing himself last night,” Mr Davies posted on his Facebook page.
He says the man, whom he knows, texted him from Dunedin to say “he’s had enough. He’s going to end it”.
Mr Davies said he stopped on the side of the road and talked to the man for an hour.
After a stand-off and confrontation police took the man to accident and emergency services where he got medical treatment for the harm he did to himself.
But there was no treatment for “his actual problem”, and he was given a taxi chit to get home where he had no power, heat or food.
He says the man is a hard worker and he has complex issues.
Mental health services “must do their job regardless” of how complex needs are.
That yahoo article containts mistakes (Davis not Davies for a start).
Having a look at Davis’ FB page, good on him and Curran for making something happen. However he does have a bit of a hero complex and seems largely ignorant (or willfully ignorant) of why our mental health services are the way they are.
There are bloody good reasons for why the state can’t just section people willy nilly, and many of those reasons are because of serious abuses of power in the past. The big push towards community mental health in recent decades, supported by Labour, was meant to establish broader support so that it wouldn’t just be left to the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff services. Massive fail on that, and a classic example of neoliberal co-option of good ideas and well intentioned people.
Davis can bang his fist on the table over this all he likes, but until there is a govt that addresses poverty, and then works for the wellbeing of all people, then what he will get is tinkering around the edges.
Besides all that, the Southern DHB is in a mess and as a politician he should be addressing that. Blaming emergncy psych services for things that are often outside their control is not helping. Those psych services were failing under the last Labour govt too. If he is serious about this issue he needs to step up with some solid policy on what will make a difference. Making out that staff should break the law, esp where that law is designed to protect people, is just not on.
There’s a lot about caring for someone who’s unwell that isn’t as you’d expect, coming from normal society, and without wider family experience. The first few times you expect the process to more objective, like a broken arm. But it’s not, it’s this amazing, complex interaction of patient and clinician, fear rebellion and trust, liberty privacy and control, and someone who is tearing to pieces but can think everything is fine.
I’ve had to be part of catching my partner at the bottom of the cliff about every six years and am slowly learning more and more each time. I wish I knew what I know now 20 yeas ago, and I’ll learn a lot more yet. But Kelvin sounds like I did 15 years ago. We expect the process to work in a concise and determined way. It doesn’t, but it can and does work, in a patient centred way.
I hope that Kelvin will learn on from this experience to understand the process and journey that an unwell person follows to live within their world.
Thoughtful comment Graeme. I think it’s one of the downsides of the push to see mental illness as the same as physical disease. People end up thinking it should be that straightforward.
Covers quite a bit of ground, but a few main points:
Trumpism has a deep-rooted appeal in a disenfranchised blue collar right excluded by a managerial technocratic ruling class post WWII (a class championed as the face of new conservatism by William F Buckley).
What it shares with the left, and makes it attractive to some nominal or former leftists is its opposition to neoliberalism and managerialism.
However, any pretence that the racism and something involving brown shirts and silly walks or a tendency to wear bedsheets and set crosses on fire is merely incidental or an embarrassing fringe is naive at best. Reactionary racial and sexual supremacism is intrinsic to the movement and many of the founding figures and current inciters are unashamed racist nationalists. An endorsement of Trump from the leader of the American N*** Party should be no surprise.
Mention is given to the publicity-hungry trolls of the “alt-right” such as Milo Yiannopoulos, who have seized on it as a stage to act out their own narcissism.
Makes an interesting parallel with this, examining the decline of liberal democracy:
A left wing journo was invited to Milo Yiannopoulos and the Republican shitshow… what she saw should scare anyone with functioning nervous system. View at Medium.com
What’s happening to this country has happened before, in other nations, in other anxious, violent times when all the old certainties peeled away and maniacs took the wheel. It’s what happens when weaponised insincerity is applied to structured ignorance. Donald Trump is the Gordon Gekko of the attention economy, but even he is no longer in control. This culture war is being run in bad faith by bad actors who are running way off-script, and it’s barely begun, and there are going to be a lot of refugees.
While you may see Trump as a stick with which to beat the elites, that stick will beat the rest of the people too, particularly those with darker skins. That’s particularly callous schadenfreude.
Firstly, I think that under either Trump or Clinton, the multi-decades long income stagnation and collapse of the US middle class will continue.
Secondly, my point stands: if the Democratic Party wanted the stronger anti-Trump candidate, one who was polling far more strongly against Trump and carried far less questionable political baggage, they could have chosen him.
Yes I’m afraid so. Bernie and Corbyn are actually the reasonable face of a wider movement, shoving them aside will not solve anything, it will just further delay the needed reforms that WILL occur one way or another.
The Republicans could have avoided this insanity as well, instead of sucking up to the Tea Party idiots and hamming it up for fox news. It’s a party on life support, i wonder if their Wall St backers are sick of them too.
Indeed. The Democrats said of the working class that “they have nowhere else to go” and the Republicans saw them as useful shock troops in the form of the Tea Party but never imagined that they’d get up on their hind legs.
If I were voting in the American election, I’d want to vote for a unicorn, not choosing Nixon over Mussolini. We can be grateful for MMP at least allowing alternative voices in government rather than the duopoly that results from FPP.
Admittedly he described my former workplace very accurately in Dilbert…
Is this some joke that went over my head or is there a Scott Adams who is a statistician with extensive access to data and algorithms to process it and not a satirical cartoonist?
And his support for this assertion is…? Looking at his blog post on the subject, not much.
Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit” from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark :
1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
Anecdotes and claims about having to say that he supported Clinton for his own physical safety(!). No facts given, merely anecdote and gut instinct.
2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
No evidence, hence no debate.
3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
Not an expert.
4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
Vague gestures in this direction, nothing substantive, resorts to gut instinct.
5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
Hoooo boy!
6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
NOPE.
7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
Nope. Gut instinct again.
8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
Hypothesis has no evidence, supposes unexplained forces at work to an unknown degree.
9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
Too vague to be falsifiable, contains a bit of handwaving in the manner of “I could be wrong, but…”
Sagan is simply summarising the universal scientific method. That’s how science works. It makes predictions based on the best available data at the time.
Naturally as time passes through the campaign, new events will happen, new data will be acquired. You ignore the fact that Silver is analysing polls, not measuring an invariable predetermined event. Clearly a campaign is not a static object but a process. In the early stages of the data gathering process, it is to be expected that wild results will be produced.
At this point the reasonable assumption based on quantified data and reasonable analysis and extrapolation is that Trump will still lose. There is a possibility that Trump may win, and it’s greater than the chance that a unicorn will win. However, I still think that Silver’s polling is far superior to Adam’s entrails and a Trump win is therefore very unlikely.
Rhinocrates, I ask you again, where is the evidence that using the “universal scientific method” to predict the outcome of US Presidential elections is statistically superior than any other method?
How is it that Nate Silver’s organisation can assign 6:1 odds in favour of Clinton and have that taken seriously, when he has been outright wrong about Trump relatively recently.
IMO it’s going to be an easy Trump win come November. I can accept that you believe that opinion flies in the face of all the objective scientific evidence.
I tell you what though they just played a bit of a his last couple of his speech’s on prime news , now if i was someone who paid little attention to politics what he was saying would of grabbed my attention.
And all clinton did was tweet a sulky tweet inresponse.
Family in illegally converted garage faces eviction
A family living in a South Auckland garage faces eviction in October because the landlord converted it into a flat without a council permit.
Samoanagalo Ioelu, Nick Mah Yen and their 11-month-old son Charlie have been living in the Manurewa garage since their landlord converted it into a three-room flat just after Charlie was born.
From the street, the building still looks like a conventional garage with a roller door taking up most of the frontage.
Behind the door, the garage now boasts a small living room with a large mat covering the floor, a bedroom and a bathroom for which Ioelu and Mah Yen pay $220 a week.
“…Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent essay in Foreign Affairs: “‘Populism’ is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don’t like.” Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both.”
yes, he’s no slouch…nailed it.
“The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labour movement. They are not synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.”
“If we cannot halt the emissions of carbon dioxide, what can we do?
In the end, the only hope we have is to find a way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere once it has got there. Even the IPCC has admitted that we will have to find a way to extract carbon dioxide from the air. The trouble is that they don’t just how we can do that. The most favoured scheme is known as BECCS: bio-energy with carbon capture and storage. Essentially, you plant trees and bushes over vast swaths of ground. These grow, absorbing carbon dioxide in the process. Then you burn the wood to run power plants while trapping, liquefying and storing the carbon dioxide that is released.”
Ok, so people don’t want to change their lifestyles and this makes them think they can defy physics? Some people sure, but I think mostly it’s more a process of desperation. My reply was to point out that there are better thing to do with that desperation than go to fantasty land.
Im more inclined to think its a case of not wishing to think about it or being more focused on perceived more pressing needs…..that can be considered fantasyland (or denial) but it is a prevalent state.
There’s a few other possibilities. For just one instance, currently concrete is a major climate nasty mostly due to fossil fuels burned for process heat and the CO2 released by chemical reactions in cement production, However, concrete also absorbs CO2 back out of the atmosphere as it cures.
Simply changing the process heat source to renewable electricity plus capture and storage of the CO2 released during calcination would turn conventional concrete into a small net carbon sink rather than a large emitter.
But there’s also processes that create unconventional cements suitable for concrete that absorb CO2 during manufacture, rather than releasing it. Which would be even better.
there appear to be many proposals for carbon capture, however as far as I can see those investigating the options all seem to come to same conclusion that what is currently feasible (even potentially) lack the capacity to remove the volumes required….that may not be so into the future but there is also a time constraint factor…no point in having a process in 50 -100 years time if we’re already extinct.
Personally I reckon human extinction in 50 to 100 years is very unlikely. Either massive nuclear war, or the oceans turning anoxic (apparently has happened before so non-zero probability). I reckon the sight of billions dying in the tropics will scare the rest of the planet to take enough action that there will still be habitable refuge areas in high latitudes.
if billions are dying in the tropics (or anywhere) I would suggest it will be past the point of no return…..as to anoxic oceans we may be well on the way already….when the food chain collapses the resulting extinction events will be rapid so 50 -100 years may seem hyperbolic but not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility.
The Referendums Framework Bill was due back from select committee today. But there's no report on it. Instead, the bill has been bounced back to the House under Standing order 29593) because the Committee didn't bother to produce one. They probably tried. But given the membership of the committee (which ...
Two years into New Zealand’s Labour-led government, the long-delayed Zero Carbon Bill became law on 7 November. Passed essentially unanimously, the lengthy public debates and political manoeuvring faded away until the final passage was even anticlimactic: Flipping through the @nzstuff@DomPost I was starting to wonder if I’d dreamt ...
Now the Zero Carbon Bill is law, what's next? Obviously, the ETS changes currently before select committee are going to be the next battleground. But we're also going to get a good idea of where we're going, and if the progress the Zero Carbon Act promises is good enough, during ...
Grant PearceThe effects of the current Australian bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland (and also again in California) are devastating and far-reaching. To date, the fires have resulted in several lives being lost and many homes and properties destroyed. Here in New Zealand, the impacts have been only ...
A passing comment in a post the other day about the labour force participation rates of older people prompted me to pull down the fuller data and see what we could see about various participation rates over the decades since the HLFS began in 1986. As it happens, the ...
Distract And Divert: The rise of what we have come to call “Identity Politics” represents the ideological manifestation of the ruling class’s objective need to destroy class politics, and of the middle-class’s subjective need to justify their participation in the process.THE RELIEF of the ruling class can only be imagined. ...
"I saw a newspaper picture,From the political campaignA woman was kissing a child,Who was obviously in pain.She spills with compassion,As that young child'sFace in her hands she gripsCan you imagine all that greed and avariceComing down on that child's lips?" ...
Dr Matt Boyd, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick WilsonThe Global Health Security Index which considers pandemic threats has just been published. Unfortunately, NZ scores approximately half marks (54/100), coming in 35th in the world rankings – far behind Australia. This poor result suggests that the NZ Government needs to ...
The Zero Carbon Act is inadequate, with a weak methane target designed to give farmers a free ride. But it turns out it could have been worse: Climate Change Minister James Shaw was so desperate to get National on board, he wanted to gut that target, and leave it in ...
The Herald reprints an Australian story on a couple of tragic deaths in Bali from drinking cocktails that had methanol in them. The story argues that methanol is likely the result of home distillation. But what the young tourists were experiencing was far from a hangover. They’d consumed a toxic cocktail ...
Last month, the police announced a trial of specialist roaming armed units, which would drive round (poor, brown) areas in armoured SUVs, armed to the teeth. When they announced the trial, they told us it was about having armed police "ready to attend major incidents at any time if needed". ...
Spain went to the polls today in the second elections this year, after the Socialists (who had come to power in a confidence vote, then gone to the polls in April) rejected the offer of a coalition with the left-wing PoDemos, and instead decided to gamble n a better outcome ...
A couple of days ago I attended (and spoke at) the University of Waikato’s “LearnFest” event. There were lots of talks and sessions on very diverse aspects of teaching, mostly at tertiary level. One was by Myra Williamson from Te Piringa Faculty of Law here at Waikato, on Contract Cheating ...
There will be a transit of Mercury – the planet Mercury will pass across the face of the Sun – taking place at sunrise in New Zealand on Tuesday, 12th November. It was by observing such an event 250 years ago that James Cook and his scientist colleagues were able ...
Since becoming the world’s first openly transexual mayor and member of parliament, Georgina Beyer has been recognised as a trailblazer for trans rights. Daphna Whitmore talks with her about where she sees the current trans movement We start out talking about legislation the government put on hold that would have ...
If FFNZ really put their faith in “Top Medical Journals” they would now be amending their billboards to recognise new research results. Image from FFNZ but updated to agree with the latest research. ...
National Messiah? Chris Luxon identifies himself as an evangelical Christian. If he is genuine in this self-characterisation, then he will take every opportunity his public office provides to proselytise on behalf of his faith. He will also feel obliged to bear witness against beliefs and practices he believes to be ...
I'm going to make a Reckless Prediction™ that the Tories have 'topped out' in the 'poll of polls' / Britain Elects multipoll tracker at about 38%, and in the next week we will start to see Labour creep up on them.In fact, we might just be seeing the start of ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Lizzie Marvelly: “I may have missed this… has @afterellen gone all terf-y? Or am I reading something incorrectly? “ https://twitter.com/LizzieMarvelly/status/1191840059105742849 After Ellen is a lesbian website that is unashamedly pro-lesbian, as you’d expect. So why is Ms Marvelly so bothered about lesbians having their ...
Did you know there once was a time when it was illegal to be a gypsy (aka Romani) in Britain?That was between 1530, when the Egyptians Act was passed, and 1856, when it was repealed.Amongst other things, the act forbade the entry of 'Egyptians' into England, ordered those already there ...
Some days I sit and think, “what will I write…?” What do you say when you get to 1000 posts? Maybe you just start where you are, diverge to where this all began, then offer a collection of reader’s favourite posts, and a few of your own? (And throw in ...
Counter-Puncher: The “activists” and “radicals” (his own words) from the Indian community who took such strong exception to Shane Jones’ remarks about Immigration NZ’s treatment of arranged marriages, may end up bitterly regretting their intervention. Jones is not the sort of person who turns the other cheek to his critics.SHANE ...
In the spirit of Remember, remember the fifth of November, let's keep this in mind FOREVER.
Oh dear. Extraordinary interview on PM with Andrew Bridgen and @EvanHD just now. Bridgen was defending Jacob Rees Mogg’s Grenfell comments. Evan asked him if JRM had meant to say he would have left ...
Collision Course? In conditions of ideological white-out, the international bankers’ “Woop-Woop! Pull Up!” warning may have come too late to save global capitalism.WHAT DOES IT MEAN when international bankers are more willing to embrace radical solutions than our politicians and their electors? At both the International Monetary Fund and the ...
Pertussis (whooping cough) is a conundrum. It is a disease that was described hundreds of years ago and the bacteria that causes it (Bordetella pertussis) isolated in 1906. We have had vaccines for about 80 years but this disease is defiant in the face of human immunity. I wanted to ...
The Zero Carbon Bill has just passed its third reading, uanimously. In the end, National supported it - but we all know they'll turn around and gut it the moment they regain power. Meanwhile, I guess ACT's David Seymour didn't even bother to show up. I am on record as ...
Dr Lindsay Robertson, Dr Jerram Bateman, Professor Janet HoekMembers of the public health community hold divergent views on how access to vaping products or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) products should be arranged. Some believe ENDS should be as widely available as smoked tobacco and argue for liberal ...
When the Police were trying to cover up for the National Party over Dirty Politics, they went all-in with their abuses of power. They illegally search Nicky Hager's house, violating his journalistic privilege and invading his privacy. They unlawfully acquired Hager's bank records. They did the same to left-wing blogger ...
Last month, in response to a wave of protests by Extinction Rebellion, the British government purported to ban their protests from the whole of London. It was a significant interference with the freedoms of expression and assembly, and another sign of the country's decline into tyranny. But now, a court ...
Last year, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security reported on significant problems with the intelligence warrant system. While they were unwilling to declare any warrant "irregular" (meaning unlawful) due to the recent law change, they were also not willing to give the system a clean bill of health. Now, they've ...
The National Party has come out in support of encouraging greater vaccination uptake. But it sure isn’t the way I’d do it. National’s suggested docking the benefits of those on benefit whose kids aren’t keeping up with their vaccinations. Some in National have suggested extending that to payments under Working ...
Feeding The Flames: It is simply not enough to demand an end to “corruption”, or “inequality”, or the overbearing influence of the authorities in Beijing. These are just “lowest common denominator” demands: the sort of slogans that pull people onto the streets. They are not a plan.WHERE’S THE PLAN? Across ...
The labour market statistics have been released, and unemployment has risen to 4.2%. There are 115,000 unemployed - 11,000 fewer than when Labour took office. In that time the minimum wage has gone up by $2 an hour, which shows that the right's fears about increases causing unemployment are simply ...
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has called for submissions on Andrew Little's tyrannicalTerrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill. Normally I encourage participation in the democratic process. I am not doing so in this case. Instead, I encourage all of you to boycott this submissions process, and to post ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzIf tiny concentrations of carbon dioxide can hold enough heat ...
Aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and within it, one of the fastest sources is elite travel: billionaires flitting around the world in their private jets, spewing excessive pollution into the atmosphere just so they can avoid mixing with us dirty peasants. But in ...
That's what we face if we don't stop climate change, according to a warning from 11,000 scientists:The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists. “We declare clearly and unequivocally ...
by Phil Duncan Here’s just a few of the kind of threats issued day in and day out against gender-critical women – feminists, marxists, etc – overwhelmingly by MEN (albeit men identifying as women). “Kill all Terfs”. “Shoot a Terf today”. “All terfs deserve to be shot in the head”. ...
This is the third of the synopses of parts of the opening chapter of John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2016). The synopsis and commentary below is written by Phil Duncan. Unlike the humble cup of coffee and t-shirt that we looked at in ...
Tom MooreTraditionally a food source and cutting tool, freshwater mussels/kākahi are now widely valued as water filters that help clean our waterbodies and maintain ecosystem health throughout Aotearoa. The improvement they provide in water quality can make it easier for other animals to live in streams and rivers, as ...
And to think he gave all the potential goodwill away with that moronic, cult-like statement (repeated ad nauseam by many National hardliners) that Key is quite simply “the greatest PM we ever had”…Installation complete: this was nothing ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is back in the House today for its second reading. While this isn't the final stage, its still effectively D-Day for the bill. Because today, at around 5pm, is when we're going to find out if it has a majority, whether National will support it or ...
Winston Peters is in court today, suing a bunch of former Minister and civil servants over their pre-election leak of his superannuation repayment. He's characterised the leak as malicious, and said that it is repugnant that his information was passed on to Ministers to use for political advantage. And he's ...
Murray CoxDo I have to finish my favourite genome? That’s an often-asked question. Geneticists generally strive to produce high-quality genomes that sequence every last gene, making full use of the state-of-the-art technologies coming on stream. Sequencing DNA means determining the order of the four chemical building blocks – called ...
Transformative Politics: The idea is to turn each recipient into an unwitting accomplice in their own transformation. From interested observer to hyped-up activist, sharing our messages promiscuously with ‘friends’. You’ll be part of an ever-expanding circulatory system, Jennifer, for the ideas that will win us the election.”JENNIFER SKITTERED her chair ...
The boycott is a fundamental tool of protest. By choosing who we buy from, we can send a message, and hopefully change corporate behaviour. Historically, boycotts have been effective, for example over apartheid in South Africa and Israel, in forcing divestment from Myanmar, and in ending bus segregation in the ...
Jan Rivers spoke at the Abortion Legislation Select Committee in favour of the bill, but in opposition to calls from other submitters to exchange the word ‘woman’ for ‘person’ throughout the bill. Jan is a supporter of the feminist group Speak Up For Women and has recently written an excellent ...
I checked my traffic stats:I was intrigued by 'monica29' - who was this very dedicated individual? I clicked on the link, to be greeted with ...Ho, hum.Spreadin' the word, spreadin' the word. Doesn't matter who hears it, as long as it gets out there. ...
There have been three polls since the election was announced, and I will shamelessly steal YouGov / UK Polling Report's Anthony Wells' summary of them:Survation – CON 34%, LAB 26%, LDEM 19%, BREX 12%, GRN 1% Ipsos MORI – CON 41%, LAB 24%, LDEM 20%, BREX 7%, GRN 3% YouGov ...
The following article is translated from Lutte Ouvrière, the weekly newspaper of the organisation usually known by the same name in France. When, for the second time this year, Chilean President Piñera announced an increase in the price of Metro tickets from 800 to 830 pesos, students in the high ...
Today, a worker contacted me asking if she could go to the police over her employer stealing thousands of dollars from her in unpaid wages. The employer also did not pay this worker’s taxes or student loan which amounts to tax fraud. As a workers rights activist, who founded the ...
Signed, Sealed, Delivered, They're Yours: Is there any person more vulnerable than a jilted lover on the rebound? Or, anything more certain than that the charmer, the predator, the glib spinner of lies and promises will seek such broken people out? Yes, of course, he will love every one of ...
Though Jonathan Romain is a fairly high profile Rabbi, writing in several papers and popping up on TV and the radio, this story doesn't seem to have made it to the Guardian yet, so I'll take the unusual step of linking the Stephen Pollard edited Jewish Chronicle:Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain ...
There's an election afoot, and that is when noted opinion formers such as myself get to make wild fools of ourselves by pretending we have the faintest idea what will happen.So, here is my absurdly optimistic prediction:Labour - 285Conservative - 262SNP - 53Lib Dems - 20PC - 5Ireland - 18 ...
Image Credit:Increase Social Media Traffic & Website Traffic I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your ...
Belinda CridgeI was reading my son a story last night. A great tale of derring-do of five mountaineers scaling the Matterhorn for the first time. One in the party had tried six times previously and failed, this was the last attempt before winter closed another season. They tried a ...
As introduced, the Zero Carbon Bill included an expansive secrecy clause, which would have covered virtually all decisions by the Climate Change Commission over our most important policy area. The Ministry for the Environment admitted this was a mistake (or as they put it, an "oversight"), and the select committee ...
Rachael Shaw, Victoria University of WellingtonWhen we think about animals storing food, the image that usually comes to mind is a squirrel busily hiding nuts for the winter. We don’t usually think of a small songbird taking down an enormous invertebrate, tearing it into pieces and hiding these titbits ...
. . NZ First’s success in putting the euthenasia bill to a public referenda may not be the victory they believe it to be. They may even have sounded the death-knell for a second Labour-NZ First-Green coalition. On 23 July this year, NZ First MP, Jenny Marcroft, submitted a Supplementary ...
Interesting contrasting pictures in the Guardian:Corbyn gets the classic positive shot - low angle and a clear background, making him look authoritative (of course, being Corbyn, he doesn't do authoritative very well).Where as Johnson gets pictured with children at some sort of mad-hatters' tea party:Begging the question, who is the ...
Paternalism is contentious. Arguments for state action to protect us from ourselves are fraught. I come down pretty heavily on the anti-paternalism side of the argument, but I’ve heard respectable defences of paternalism. But policy around vaccination is hardly paternalistic. There’s a clear market failure that could be pointed to ...
I’ve been reading Jules Verne’s novel Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, considered as one of the very earliest science fiction stories. In brief, Monsieur Aronnax and a couple of sidekicks are taken prisoner by Captain Nemo and his mysterious crew and treated to an underwater voyage around the world ...
The climate crisis is going to mean some pretty big changes in our country, both from its impacts and the policies required to address them. Most obviously, whole suburbs are going to be underwater by 2100, meaning people and businesses are going to have to relocate to higher ground. But ...
Yesterday a dairy company was fined $483,000 for repeatedly failing to report listeria in its facility. Its a serious fine for a serious crime: listeria is a serious disease, and they were effectively trying to kill people with it. But there's another story hidden in there, and its not a ...
Gay men see the excesses of trans activism and are increasingly speaking out. A new Facebook group addressing ‘gender identity’ and contemporary trans activism has been set up for gay men, by gay men. The following is the group’s Statement of Intent, Group Rules, and link to the group for ...
Criminal Enterprises: Gangs are not welfare institutions. Nor are they a substitute for the family their members never had. They are ruthless, violent, criminal money-making machines. That is all.OKAY, first-things-first. Gangs exist for one purpose – and only one. They are a sure-fired, time-tested institution for making crime pay – ...
Prof Nick Wilson, A/Prof George Thomson, A/Prof Simon Hales, Prof Michael BakerThe NZ Ministry for the Environment has produced a valuable discussion document with many good ideas for improving the health of waterways in New Zealand. But there are important gaps. In this blog we consider three big-ticket items ...
Finding reality needs more than wishful thinking. The problem is that statistical arguments often provide a jargon to confirm biases. Image credit:Accurate Thinking Versus Wishful Thinking in Gambling I worry at the way some ...
"Today we have made a choice that will leave a legacy... I hope that means that future generations will see that we, in New Zealand, were on the right side of history." - Jacinda Ardern, Third Reading of the Zero Carbon Bill ...
Darroch Ball, New Zealand First List MP A Member’s bill has been proposed that would provide income tax exemptions for all New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel while on operational deployment overseas. The Income Tax (Exemption for Salary or Wages of NZDF Members on Active Deployment) Amendment Bill proposed by New Zealand First ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have brought common sense to the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, which passed its final reading in Parliament today. Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters says months of hard work went into negotiating a balanced ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First has listened to calls to recognise paramedics as registered health professionals under the Health Practitioners’ Competence Assurance Act (the Act).Today, the Coalition Government announced plans for paramedics to be registered as health practitioners under the Act, and the establishment of a ...
We began the week by commemorating the New Zealand Wars and celebrating a major increase in the number of teachers. Then, we were busy supporting offenders into work and getting our rail back on track after years of underinvestment. And that's just the start! ...
In October I was sworn in as the Mayor of Lower Hutt.It’s the privilege of my life to serve Hutt people as their Mayor. There is something really special to be able to serve the community where I was raised, and where I live. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters met with Korea Racing Authority Chairperson Nak Soon Kim in Seoul today to discuss closer cooperation between the New Zealand and Korean horse racing industries. As part of the visit to the Seoul Racecourse, Mr Peters witnessed ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $10 million to establish Otago as the centre of New Zealand’s creative digital industry over the next ten years, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “The initiative will bring us closer to the vision of ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)’s skills and employment programme will help young Otago people into long-term forestry careers, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. Te Ara Mahi will invest $63,000 in the 2020 school year to support eight 17 and 18 ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) will support local plans to revitalise and stimulate economic development opportunities in Otago, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The four Regional Economic Development Ministers have approved an in-principle investment of $19.9 million towards the region’s ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is pleased to have received the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) report on the Coalition Government’s Mycoplasma bovis eradication efforts, which shows significant progress in the fight against the disease. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, says the report’s findings ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Hon David Parker, Minister for Trade and Export Growth The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing to support economic growth opportunities for Otago’s engineering and manufacturing sectors, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones and Trade and Export Minister David Parker announced today. Almost $20 million ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters and his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, discussed in Seoul today opportunities to work more closely in the Pacific and the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Mr Peters and Minister Kang confirmed New Zealand and the ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Minister for Māori Development The three marae in the historic Parihaka Pa complex in Taranaki have been upgraded to high speed broadband with the support of the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Connecting the ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence Minister of Defence Ron Mark will today launch the Advancing Pacific Partnerships 2019 Defence Assessment during a speech at Te Papa. The Assessment outlines how Defence will partner with our Pacific Island neighbours and invest in Pacific regional security architecture. The Plan aligns with the Coalition ...
A new Provincial Growth Fund investment could create about 80 new jobs in Gisborne over the next two years, turning a local small business into a “beacon of employment” in the process. Regional Economic Development Parliamentary Under-Secretary Fletcher Tabuteau said the PGF’s Te Ara Mahi funding stream would provide $1.6m ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters will travel to the Republic of Korea and Japan next week. “The Republic of Korea and Japan are two of New Zealand’s closest partners in the region with whom we share common values and ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced today that New Zealand is leading a police support mission in Bougainville as the region prepares to vote in a non-binding referendum on its political future. “New Zealand has accepted an invitation ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones is defending Immigration New Zealand (INZ) after it instructed officials to stop granting visas as an exception to instructions. He has also lashed out at immigrant leaders upset with the tightening of the rules, saying they had an “elevated sense of entitlement”. Members of ...
A change to the End of Life Choice Bill was passed in Parliament, meaning if politicians decide to vote for the law it must be approved by the public first. A binding referendum was a condition insisted on by New Zealand First, and Jenny Marcroft’s supplementary order paper (SOP) successfully ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), through its skills and employment programme,Te Ara Mahi, is investing a further $1.6m into Tairāwhiti’s workforce development, said Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau. “This PGF funding follows on from significant PGF investment earlier this ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters says the Government’s steps to reduce farm livestock emissions are necessary and timely. Today the Government and farming leaders announced a plan to measure and price emissions at the farm level by 2025. “Many farmers ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters welcomes the tabling of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) 2019 Annual Report in Parliament today. He says the 2019 Annual Report marks the point when New Zealand’s racing industry’s decline was arrested and a turnaround started. RITA’s 2019 Annual Report recorded an industry net profit ...
The New Zealand Government is today sending 21 firefighters to help fight the ongoing catastrophic Australian bushfires. “The fires in Australia are in some of the toughest, most challenging conditions ever,” says Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. “As of yesterday morning, there were 100 active bushfire-related incidents across Queensland and ...
More frontline support for schools through a new education agency, as part of a redesigned Ministry of Education More support for principals and school boards including through a new centre of leadership and local leadership advisor roles New independent disputes panels for parents and students Management of school property ...
The Government’s reform of the Tomorrow’s Schools system is a watershed moment in education and an opportunity to create meaningful change for ākonga Māori and their whānau, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis said today. “Last year through Kōrero Mātauranga | Education Conversation, Māori teachers, parents, ākonga, whānau, hapū and iwi ...
Infrastructure Minister is welcoming the first of many updated project pipelines from the newly established New Zealand Infrastructure Commission today. The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Te Waihanga, has released an expanded pipeline of major capital projects – another crucial step towards delivering better infrastructure outcomes. “The first iteration of the ...
Tougher gun laws designed to improve public safety through firearms prohibition orders are proposed in a new document released for public input. Police Minister Stuart Nash says firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) would give new powers to Police to ensure high-risk individuals come nowhere near firearms. “We have already prohibited the ...
Andy Coupe has been confirmed as TVNZ’s new Board Chair. “Mr Coupe has strong commercial and capital markets experience and TVNZ has benefited from his technical knowledge of business and finance, as well as his extensive governance experience,” the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Kris Faafoi said. Andy ...
Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter today officially opened a separated pathway, following the completion of the Kaiwharawhara Stream bridge, which will improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians along Hutt Road. The $6.8m Hutt Road project provides a separated path for cycling and pedestrians, the replacement of informal parking ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of career diplomat Si’alei van Toor as New Zealand’s next Ambassador to Russia. “I’m pleased to appoint Ms van Toor to this position. She brings a wealth of experience to the role having previously served as Senior Trade Adviser to the ...
The Treasury’s 2019 Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update (HYEFU) will be released on Wednesday December 11, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Coalition Government will publish the 2020 Budget Policy Statement at the same time, outlining the priorities for Budget 2020. Further details on arrangements for the release will ...
A new initiative to better support small businesses through hands-on mentoring and advice has been launched by the Minister for Small Business. The first event in the Kiwi Business Boost series of regional workshops and online tools has been launched in Wairoa by Stuart Nash. “The Business Boost initiative combines ...
The latest Quarterly Connectivity Report shows that more and more New Zealanders are moving to Ultra-fast Broadband (UFB), with Rolleston having the highest uptake at 74 per cent, as at the end of September. “This means that nearly three quarters of Rolleston’s households and businesses have moved to ultra-fast services. ...
The passing of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill will help ensure a safe planet for our kids and grandkids, the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw said today. The landmark legislation which provides a framework to support New Zealanders to prepare for, and adapt to, the effects ...
The review of Oranga Tamariki practice around the planned uplift of a Hastings baby in May shows significant failings by the Ministry and that the planned and funded changes to shift from a child crisis service to a proper care and protection service need to be accelerated, Children’s Minister Tracey ...
Education Minister Chris Hipkins has wished students the best of luck for this year’s NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship exams which start tomorrow. Around 140,000 students will have participated in 119 NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship exams by the end of the exam period on 3 December. “I want to ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced the appointment of Bede Corry as New Zealand’s next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. “The appointment of a senior diplomat to this important role underlines the significance New Zealand places on our relationship with the United Kingdom,” said Mr Peters. “The United ...
An innovative approach to boosting the number of frontline Police has seen 20 new officers graduate from one of the uncommon training wings in Auckland. Police Minister Stuart Nash says the graduation of 20 constables today means that 1,765 new Police officers have been deployed since the coalition government took ...
Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis says the 1.2 million hours of community work completed by offenders in the last financial year has helped local communities right across the country. “Community work sentences are a great way for people to pay something positive back to society. There is a massive benefit to ...
"A pathway for Police in leadership with Iwi Māori, to achieve the aspirations of Māori whānau." Police launch of Te Huringa o Te Tai, Pipitea Marae, Thorndon Quay, Wellington Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka nui te mihi, ki a koutou. Hello everyone, warm greetings to you all. ...
Working New Zealanders are getting more in their back pockets under the Coalition Government’s economic plan. Stats NZ data today shows average weekly ordinary time earnings are up by $83 since the Government took office. This shows that working New Zealanders are getting higher take-home pay, and that employers are ...
The Government is supporting schools to cut down their energy consumption and reduce environmental impacts, with a quarter of all schools having their lights replaced with LEDs, a sustainability contestable fund and a plan to improve the environmental sustainability of all schools in the future. Education Minister Chris Hipkins and ...
Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis heads to China on Friday to lead the New Zealand Government presence at the China-New Zealand Year of Tourism closing ceremony. The ceremony will take place at Canton Tower in Guangzhou on Sunday 10 November. “The Year of Tourism has been mutually beneficial for both New ...
Should we plan for drought or deluge and how is CO2 released from the ocean’s floor? Several climate change projects were given a boost in the latest Marsden Fund investment of $83.6 million, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods said today. “Climate change is long-term challenge that requires out-of-the-box ...
Leaders of 16 countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) have announced the completion of negotiation on the text as well as agreement on virtually all market access issues between 15 countries. The leaders said they will work with India to resolve its outstanding concerns in a way that ...
Civil Defence Minister Hon Peeni Henare says World Tsunami Awareness Day today (5 November) is a chance for all New Zealanders to learn more about the tsunami risk in our regions and the right actions to take to stay safe. “All of New Zealand’s coastline is at risk of tsunami. ...
New Zealand’s more than 1000 paramedics are to have their role as key frontline health professionals formally recognised and regulated in the same way as doctors and nurses, Health Minister David Clark says. The Government has agreed to regulate paramedics under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003. “Paramedic leaders ...
Changes to insolvency law announced by the Government today will include requirements to honour up to 50 per cent of the value of gift cards or vouchers held by consumers, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi says. “When a business is insolvent, these consumers are often left out of ...
Six New Zealanders tonight received medals for their meritorious work in the frontline public service. The Public Service Medal, established by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, is awarded annually. “For the second year this Government has recognised public servants who have made a real difference to the lives of New ...
Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker heads to Shanghai today for the China International Import Expo and meetings focused on reforming the WTO. Over 90 New Zealand companies will be exhibiting at the second China International Import Expo (CIIE), which runs from 5-10 November. “China is one of New Zealand’s ...
Drivers holding a current five-year learner or restricted car or motorbike licence, expiring between 1 December 2019 and 1 December 2021, will receive an automatic two-year extension, Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter announced today. Over 144,000 drivers’ time-limited licences are due to expire in the next two years; 67,000 ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker have announced the conclusion of negotiations to upgrade New Zealand’s existing free trade agreement with China. “This ensures our upgraded free trade agreement will remain the best that China has with any country,” Jacinda Ardern said. She ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau congratulates the Ten Kiwi organisations who have been recognised for their outstanding contribution to the wellbeing and the prosperity of their communities. Economic Development New Zealand (EDNZ), announced the awards at its annual conference in Blenheim last weekend. “A special congratulations to ...
Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa has welcomed the record high of 13,000 building and construction apprentices in active training with main provider the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation (BCITO). “We are committed to reversing the long-term decline in trades training and it’s excellent to see more people ...
PHARMAC’s decision to fund a new leukaemia treatment means three new cancer medicines have now been funded so far this year, Health Minister David Clark says. From 1 December venetoclax (Venclexta) will be funded for people living with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Just last month funding was also confirmed for alectinib ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today formally gifted a white horse to Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, Japan in front of thousands of attendees at a ceremony conducted by Chief Priest Inaba. The horse named Kōmaru, which means ‘sheltered’ in Maori and ‘shining’ in Japanese, is a white 12-year-old purebred Andalusian ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has named diplomat Martin Harvey as New Zealand’s next High Commissioner to Canada. “Canada is one of New Zealand’s closest and longstanding international partners,” said Mr Peters. “Our close friendship is underpinned by our shared democratic values, history and our parliamentary traditions. As Commonwealth countries and ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi has today announced the appointment of Jane Wrightson as Retirement Commissioner. “Jane has strong leadership, management and governance skills which will help champion improved financial capability for all New Zealanders and provide advice on retirement income policy issues,” Kris Faafoi said. Jane Wrightson ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and his Japanese counterpart Toshimitsu Motegi announced a plan last night to cooperate more closely in the Pacific, as part of the strong and ambitious relationship between the two countries. “Japan is one of New Zealand’s most important partners and closest friends. My discussions with Minister ...
The Government’s plan to help older New Zealanders live well, Better Later Life – He Oranga Kaumātua 2019 to 2034, was launched by Seniors Minister Tracey Martin today. “Better Later Life takes a fresh look at what is required to ensure everyone gets the chance to live well as they ...
Trees can play a lead role in New Zealand’s transition to a low emissions economy, and this is reflected in a new request for research into innovative ways to use wood fibre, announced by Forestry Minister Shane Jones at the blessing of the new government forestry hub site in Rotorua ...
Fifteen years on, Sam Brooks looks at Gwen Stefani’s wet, weird, wild and wonderful debut album Love. Angel. Music. Baby.The first thing we hear on Love. Angel. Music. Baby. – No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani’s first album – is applause and cheering.Then a piano. Then Stefani warbling, sweetly, mournfully, almost ...
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Making Northport Auckland’s main port will require massive investment in rail and road and will increase carbon emissions and the cost of goods says National Road Carriers Association CEO David Aitken. ...
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The Panama Papers exposed a world in which the uber-rich and powerful were able to hide unimaginable wealth. The reporters who broke the story describe how they did it.“When it takes a whistleblower to sound the alarm… it signals that democracy’s checks and balances have all failed.”The final words in ...
Family First New Zealand has proposed a number of bills to the government regarding the access to pornography in both public places, including schools and the work place. “There has been an important national conversation around consent and ‘rape culture’. ...
Vernon Tava, the leader of the Sustainable NZ party, used to be part of the Greens. So how did he fit in there? Former MP Catherine Delahunty shares her impressions of him from then, and analyses where his new party will fit in.I first met Vernon Tava when he joined ...
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It’s been a rough year for unit-holders in Fonterra Shareholders Fund, with the unit price slumping from $5.12 to its lowest point ever at $3.15. Chairman John Shewan didn’t mince words when he told the Fund’s annual meeting this week Fonterra’s financial performance had been “very poor” in 2019. Not ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Zero Carbon Bill, climate change Henry Cooke (Stuff): NZ First kept methane target from exiting ...
At 5:00pm on 22 November 2019, the period closes for public submissions regarding the changes BSA is proposing to the Election Programmes Code of Broadcasting Practice (Election Programmes Code). ...
Rachel Boyack was confirmed as the Labour Party candidate for Nelson for the 2020 General Election at a meeting of Party members held in Nelson tonight ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is bland and ineffective. Don’t fall for the spin, argues Steve Abel of Greenpeace. It was hard to not be buoyed by our House of Representatives, seemingly aligned in their commitment to climate action, at last week’s passing of the Zero Carbon Act. Bold expositions of pride ...
A new nationwide Curia Market Research poll shows the vast majority of New Zealanders are confused about what the End of Life Choice Bill aims to legalise. ...
The Prime Minster is defending her proposed firearms protection orders which has received mixed reactions in parliament; and attempted suicide in police custody has risen by almost 400 percent in four years. ...
A Helen Clark Foundation project to reduce online harm will be presented today in competition at the Paris Peace Forum. 'The Christchurch Principles' full report is available for download here . The Forum is a prestigious international event, initiated ...
Construction of more than 500 houses for New Zealand’s most needy families has been put on hold during a housing crisis because of a controversial policy change. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Sinclair, Research Fellow, NICM Health Research Institute, Western Sydney University Endometriosis is a chronic, inflammatory condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus is found outside of the womb. It affects around one in ten women of reproductive age, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Fisher, Professor of Cattle & Sheep Production Medicine, University of Melbourne The plight of Australia’s dairy farmers is on the political agenda this week, after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson narrowly failed in her Senate bid for a minimum milk price. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katina Zammit, Deputy Dean, School of Education, Western Sydney University When I was younger I decided to learn Greek. I learnt the letter-sound correspondences and could say the words – the sounds, that is. But although I could and still can decode ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Holland, Senior Lecturer in Australian History, Macquarie University When the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, recently announced a co-design process for creating an Indigenous “voice to government”, it was characterised as a shift in rhetoric. Yet, on closer inspection, it ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Abou-Nemeh, Lecturer in Early Modern History, Victoria University of Wellington This week New Zealand’s parliamentarians will vote on the third reading of the End of Life Choice Bill. Much public discussion on the merits of euthanasia has centred around the role ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cris Brack, Associate Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University Trees die. You don’t have to like it, but they do. And this comes as a surprise to some. A senior public servant once told one of us (Brack): ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elaine Stratford, Professor, University of Tasmania In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages. We are all touched by relationships with animals — as domestic and working companions, wild inspirations, threats, or pests. Some of us may know about ...
The government's firearms prohibition order proposal - to keep high-risk individuals away from firearms - is being met with both approval and alarm bells. ...
The government's firearms prohibition order proposal - to keep high-risk individuals away from firearms - is being met with both approval and alarm bells. ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Armed police arrest raises alarm, report makes strong call for Auckland port to go north, and a battle is going on among Fonterra shareholders.Serious concerns have been raised about the trial of armed police officers, after a team arrested an ...
Some observers have been thinking that the forthcoming British election on 12 December would be about a lot more than just Brexit. Some of the issues polling supports this view. And the party leaders have certainly been leading off with their plans for the radiant future. And yet – new ...
Dr Samantha Marsh explains why we need to be wary of drawing definitive conclusions from single studies on social media that appear to ‘let us off the hook’. ...
A little-known hormone-related condition affecting up to 8 percent of people with periods is sometimes mistaken for bipolar disorder and incorrectly treated. ...
The unusual case of Winston Peters vs the Crown took a new twist yesterday with revelations the deputy PM and head of the civil service have not talked since the Government was formed. ...
Tech sector giants have a vested interest in prioritising freedom of expression, often at the expense of other rights. A new project to reduce harmful online content, presented yesterday to the Paris Peace Forum, aims to change that. One of the architects of the Christchurch Principles, Dr David Hall, explains. What ...
As parliament voted all but unanimously to pass the Zero Carbon Bill into law last week, climate change minister James Shaw credited Generation Zero for its very existence. Here, Jenny Coatham explains how the youth-led climate action group pulled off such a monumental task. Our generation has been described as having ...
The State Services Commissioner has told the High Court claims he acted politically when he briefed his minister about Winston Peters' superannuation payment are "untrue and unfounded". ...
White Ribbon Manager Rob McCann says Firearms Prohibition Orders could make a real difference if guns are kept out of the hands of people with a history of family harm. ...
Hundreds of dead animals, birds and sea life washed up on a West Coast beach will also be leaving a legacy of thousands of poison laden time bombs for 140 kilometres on the way downriver from the mountains to the Sea according to Alan Simmons, leader ...
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Open mike 21/08/2016 
Open mike is your post.
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Rod Oram – earth’s hopeful future
“It’s abundantly clear we have to embark on deep change so we can achieve the biggest goal humankind has ever attempted. It is not to save the planet. It will survive – even if we don’t. It will adapt as it has to previous geological eras. Over tens of millions of years vastly different life-forms and ecosystems will evolve, ones shaped by prevailing conditions.
Our goal has to be to save ourselves. To do so we must give this ecosystem that gives us life the best chance it has to recover, and to continue to support us.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/83327044/rod-oram-earths-hopeful-future
Great to see someone Oram’s position saying this.
(ecosystem recovery and assistance from humans in that IS saving the planet 😉 ).
Great. Anybody who accepts this(and I do ) must also accept that Capitalism, as we know it, will have to go. Capitalism is incompatible with saving the Planet.
CORRECT
Capitalism and consumerism as societal values and economic structures have to be defanged, declawed, and relegated to being nothing more than a minor feature of daily life.
FTFY
Well, I think there is still a place for some inter-community scale, family store scale capitalism, as well as local models of self financing, but we may differ on that point.
Capitalism is incompatible with Life.
na capitalism is just a man made tool , and like all tools if you have the right safegaurds it can be useful, it’s just that we have let the greedy use it for their purposes .
Capitalism and consumerism today is not just a “man made tool”.
It has been deliberately engineered to become the fundamental societal value system, driver for activity and international priority.
yes but with strong government it could be taken back and used just as a tool or system to get things done.
By this i mean something like.
The eu decides that all packaging will have to be biodegradable in ten years,
now some will winge , some will say it’s undoable , but some good little capitalist will see an opportunity and go to work trying to corner the market.
I don’t think you understand the life destroying nature of capitalism.
The way to reduce the problem of packaging and pollution is to reduce the amount of things people buy and use in the west by 80%.
Not make new types of packaging for the 2020s.
Two major things destroy this planet: 1/ far too many people 2/ every one of those wants what the neighbor has.
No matter what system you put in place – theoretically soviets Marxist system should have brought equal equilibrium for all but it didn’t – it is human nature that actually gets in the way. We are wired to destroy and not to build despite what some would like to belief. This is what we have to accept and learn to negotiate, our true nature. No one can say that they haven’t cotton on and by how far all is deteriorated, I would not hold my breath and unfortunately humanity will only learn when it gets a huge head clip to remind them that we are just a blip on the radar of the cosmos.
1) The richest 10% of people in the western world consume 60% of the world’s resources. This is not a question of “far too many people.” It is a question of the a few hundred million people in the rich west eating the rest of the world.
2) The only people who “wants what the neighbour has” are those who have learnt to greed, venality, jealousy and covetousness. I don’t want a yacht like my neighbour has and I don’t want a new HSV like my other neighbour has. You may think that that most people are basically venal, but perhaps that is simply only most people around your circles.
Your comments are always from the perspective that is angry and almost hateful. When you do that it becomes personal without having any grounds or indeed facts to support that. So I try to explain this differently:
1/ too many people – lets look at this globally. The greed (I want what my neighbor has) is destroying the forest and with that the reservoir for rain water exchange in the atmosphere. This in turn leads to droughts and the arable land that is available gets overused. If this continues the land we can use to feed us all will diminish even further and with that the means of sustaining the many people and growing population. Scientists have opened the Pandora’s box of gen modification and this will most likely increase the impasse in the future. We see the bees and pollinators dying already. Water: as we have seen in Hawks bay recently, water contamination will increase as aquifers are being contaminated because it is not enough to have a few cattle, it has to be more. The ground water is pumped and the lower the water table the more likely salination and contamination will occur.
2/ It is this “more” that will be humanity’s undoing.
Nature will be a great equalizer in that game of survival. This is not about money, this is about a finite world that cannot sustain an ever increasing population worldwide. I
If we wouldn’t be here, I doubt that any animal or plant would miss us. Some might be jubilant….
I agree with you Foreign Waka but what always does amuse me is – do the 10% honestly think once they have brought about complete planet collapse, that they will be able to start afresh from their bunkers or what ever and have the capacity to start again. That they cannot see that it will be their undoing as well, is just is too ridiculous for words but they are quite prepared to go over the cliff with the rest of us just for the sake of more consuming and greed. It’s like they are happy to take on a death wish for it all to occur.
I suppose in their utter selfishness they just think “well our generation will all be dead so what the hell”. Don’t they have grandchildren to have a thought for their futures and the carnage as society breaks down, that they will face.
The people who do care in this world are hopelessly powerless against the filthy rich of this world who can buy and control countries at will.
Good capitalism is an oxymoron – the model is exploitive, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but always with some, therefore it is no good. Assuming you don’t like exploitation that is.
+1
Capitalism is neither good nor bad .we need a system to get things done , and capitalism gets things done, it just needs balancing with strong government a watchful eye and a good bit of socialism .
No sorry mate that is incorrect imo
“Capitalism is neither good nor bad .we need a system to get things done , and capitalism gets things done, it just needs balancing with strong government a watchful eye and a good bit of socialism .”
Or shorter: Democratic Socialism. I’m a big fan of the Nordic Model.
I am nonetheless amused at CV’s opining on Capitalism while being a Trump supporter. Cognative dissonance is strong with him (or her)
Yeah I like the various scandinavian models. There’s a lot we can learn in everything from criminal justice to post-natal care.
And it’s no coincidence that the Nordic countries appear at the top of all metrics relating to happiness, health and equality.
where we used to be before the 1970s.
aah I’ve wondered what my political label would be , it would appear that at this stage i am a democratic socialist. Which nz party fits the bill most do you think?
Will label improve you as a human being?
Attachement to politics or labels is not something to aspire to
I wont be getting a t shirt printed any time soon .
Well, NZ Labour espouses the values of democratic socialism, according to its constitution.
Guffffaw
I wondered recently if I was right enough in perceiving a certain leakage in the levees that shore up ‘business as usual’. The first inkling came from the Guardian in a piece that not only directly quoted eminent scientists in the field expressing fairly deep misgivings about our present position and direction, but questioned this whole notion of removing carbon from the atmosphere. Previously that’s just been taken as a read by the likes of the Guardian.
And I do like that Rod characterises the need for radical action as an “adventure”…
I shared a meal with Rod Oram 2 years ago and we talked about the very thing he wrote about today. Great oaks, little acorns, etc 🙂
Heh, nice one Robert.
I was at a workshop at which Rod facilitated the discussion around action on Climate Change yesterday. Rod has been active in this area for some years now. I am not surprised with his comments. He certainly understands that the economy is a subset of the environment not the other way round.
Good activity
http://inhabitat.com/guerrilla-grafters-secretly-graft-fruit-bearing-branches-onto-san-francisco-trees/?newinfinitescroll=false
Pathetic ! On Q+A Corin Dan giving Parata the sweetest platform, like a paid ‘pretend’ interviewer. It’s disgraceful really. He just sits there watching Parata go all ‘aspirational’. FFS !
I have always refused to watch “A Political Party Broadcast on behalf of the National Party” called Q&A
Halfcrown i used too watch Q+A when it first started and even though the late Paul Holmes was the host and always could be relied upon too give the left a good kick i stuck with it because there was no other in depth political coverage at the time.
As the media has moved away from unbiased coverage in favour of the right wing perspective Q+ A has regrettably gone the same way.
Corrin Dann indulges anyone from the government side but watch him change into a nasty scowling arrogant monster when its anyone from the left, its real hatred and i dont know why anyone from the left of politics would want to appear to be treated this way and its the viewer who wants too be informed that misses out because Dann wont allow the victim too talk and get their point across basicly its just bloody bullying.
It just angers up the blood so i dont watch any of them and have pleasant no stress Sunday as god intended.
Campbell had Key worked and looked what happened to him.
Corin Dann knows what happens to independent media people.
Paula Penfold.
John Campbell.
Jon Stephenson.
Nicky Hager.
When extremists like red delusion and ‘man in the middle’ ( never knew Genghis Khan , Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini were men in the middle) rant on about Venezuela and North Korea, maybe they should look at the state of our own media.
Here are some starters for them.
Holding power to account? Or playing along for fun?http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201811741
Is the weakening of our news media fuelling a democratic deficit? If so, what should the media do? Kicking against complacency
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201811741
John Oliver’s show on Journalism could easily refer to NZ media as well.
And listen to Bomber in his show from Friday.
His final word at 26:10
Also from America and the parallels here are so striking.
Shadows of Liberty.
Open the curtains it’s a lovely day outside Paul, stop wallowing in negativity on your PC, we all have google search thus your cut and pastes while admirable from a quantitative perspective and effort is not really required
& meanwhile we have one of the highest suicide rates for children under 12, go figure huh?
+ 1 Yep he’s got the delusion bit correct.
it’s lovely for the nat supporting 30% but for the rest of us the social fabric is rotten and falling apart
45% last poll.
if you’re happy to ignore the vast underclass of non voters that the “brighter future” has created
How did polling work out in relation to actual votes from registered voters?
Non voters who do not support Labour or Greens either.
Complacent Nation.
Epitomised by the Herald.
Today’s top 10 online headings……………
Live updates of the penultimate day of the Rio Olympics.
‘Just Bledi Awful’ – Aussie’s reaction
Girl who killed her own family set free (Canadian crime story)
‘Righto, we need to take this to the police’ (the Herald appears more concerned about the All Blacks being spied on than the whole country)
KFC’s secret recipe uncovered
All Blacks v Australia: Player ratings
Revealed: The best and worst airline food
Cold case mystery: Is he still alive? (Australian crime story)
Who is the lucky punter who won $13.3m?
Could Hamblin win rare Olympic medal?
The poisoning of 4000 New Zealand citizens?
Not as important.
By the way A great win by ab last night, more meritorious they can achieve such high standards living in such a neo liberal hell hole
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Au contraire Redelusion. The All Blacks do well because of this neolib hellhole. Sport is over emphasised , overglorified and overpaid.
Neoliberalism and sport.
More wins for the All Blacks and less money and support for the grassroots.
More medals at Olympics and less participation in sport.
Olympic swimmers. Closing school polls.
http://snpa.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/CARTOONS-by-Jim-Hubbard/G0000MGcw3HsyXeA/I0000uX0HbRxXL50
Shhhhhhh mate is their any joy in your life , suggestion stop bringing every thing back to partisan politics Just enjoy something for enjoyment sake, as the say accentuate the positive it could be life changing for you
Of course you have not read or listened to one of the articles I have posted.
Yet you feel qualified to comment.
look the sun is really beaming out of FJK’s arse today.
Simply questioning the paradise that is Planet Key attracts a lot of flak from rd and other trolls.
Sport is over emphasised , overglorified and overpaid.
In the days when everyone was a sportsmen
Back then, worn out tennis balls would mysteriously appear in the gutters of our street. Finding one of these little beauties could mean only one thing: it was time for a street cricket match.
Kids’ names were called out and pretty soon you had enough players to start a game. While the batsmen, bowlers and the wicketkeeper were definitely human, most of the fieldsmen were drawn from the vast throng of free-range neighbourhood dogs.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/this-cricketing-life/news-story/4630e4486fa52366f349481e00980639
The art of a great yarn is still very australian.
Your posts should be accompanied by violins Paul
Don’t you care about the decline of democracy in this country?
Or is Venezuela’s democracy your only concern?
What’s with Venezuela this morning that has you so agitated ?
‘man in the middle’ gets his name because of where his nose is, in relation to John Keys cheeks.
“Corin Dann knows what happens to independent media people.
Paula Penfold.
John Campbell.
Jon Stephenson.
Nicky Hager”
Independent media people, John Cambell and Nicky Hager, for fucks sake Paul
you really are delusional. You win most stupid comment of the week.
zzzzzz
That’s great, Marty. If anyone wants to learn how to graft, I’ll teach you 🙂
How long does it take for a new graft on an established tree to fruit? For an Apple tree? Pears? Plums? Cherry? (I’m guessing plums and cherries are sooner).
Cool link marty.
A graft “takes” quickly, days or weeks, depending on the type of graft. I do a simple cleft graft that binds more slowly, as it’s done at the end of winter and moves with the rise of the sap. Bud grafts are done when things are cranking, and take a shorter time. In any case, grafting fruit-bearing scions onto decorative trees is fun and funny.
How long until it fruits?
2 years…depends a little on circumstance, but, 2 years. Pears though, are difficult to do. I wouldn’t bother.
ta!
Fifty years ago the Gurindji people walked off Lord Vesty’s Northern Territory Wave Hill station.
.
Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this article contains images, voices and names of deceased people.
Fifty years ago, the Gurindji people of the Northern Territory made their name across Australia with the 1966 Wave Hill Walk-Off.
It was a landmark event that inspired national change: equal wages for Aboriginal workers, as well as a new Land Rights Act.
Although it took another two decades, the Gurindji also became one of the first Aboriginal groups to reclaim their traditional lands.
Many people know a small part of the walk-off story because of the song From Little Things, Big Things Grow about 200 stockmen, house servants and their families who walked off Wave Hill Station on 23 August 1966, in protest at appalling pay and living conditions.
But what is not widely known is that the walk-off followed more than 80 years of massacres and killings, stolen children and other abuses by early colonists.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-19/the-untold-story-being-the-1966-wave-hill-walk-off/7764524
[audio src="http://indigenousrights.net.au/__data/assets/mp3_file/0018/413550/f56.mp3" /]
Vincent Lingiari introduces the recording in his language, which he then translates into English.
My name is Vincent Lingiari, came from Daruragu, Wattie Creek station.
That means that I came down here to ask all these fella here about the land rights. What I got story from my old father or grandfather that land belongs to me, belongs to Aboriginal men before the horses and the cattle come over on that land where I am sitting now. That is what I have been keeping on my mind and I still got it on my mind. That is all the words I can tell you.
Ted Egan
Thanks Joe 90. Makes ya weep.
Regretfully Joe – it isn’t much better even today. The billions of dollars that are “invested” in the indigenous people of Australia mainly ends up in State administration and people getting rich at the expense of those who really need it. The land on which aboriginal communities live is State owned – not the peoples – as are the houses and all the facilities. The first aborigine ,albert namatjirato be granted Australian citizenship was in 1957.
Read a beautiful book about Aboriginal culture recently… really moving
John Minto (The Keep Our Assets Canterbury Mayoral candidate) outlined his six key policies at a campaign launch on Saturday.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/83384157/john-minto-says-he-will-fight-widespread-homelessness-in-chch-if-he-becomes-mayor
On the mayoral front, Christchurch has three candidates. How will Minto fare?
Thoughts?
Poorly
Your posts should be accompanied by barrel organ music, Reddelusion.
Maybe the Lego song “everything is awesome“
The latter please 😀
Minto is giving voters of Christchurch the opportunity to keep their assets.
It will be interesting to see if the people of Christchurch will support him.
Policies are not the only basis upon which voters cast their votes.
Overall credibility, able to bring along a team, general fiscal prudence, impact on rates, capability of the incumbent all bear upon the voters choice.
Lianne will get back in easily.
Fiscal prudence like a great big fuck off convention centre and rugby stadium? Or fiscal prudence involving buying up tracts of prime central city land in order to prop up land prices artificially for the governments mates? Or the environmentally prudent moves by ECan to allow shitty farmers to steal all the good water?
Democracy has failed in Canterbury, destroyed by the disaster capitalists and abetted by that waste of space Brownlee
Indeed Wayne, policies are not the only basis upon which voters cast their votes.
However, you seem to be implying Minto lacks fiscal prudence and a number of other traits required.
Minto has far more credibility than the current ex Labour incumbent that seems to support the corporate agenda status quo.
This local election is going to be a battle between an alternative left-fielder and the corporate status quo.
Minto winning will be akin to Peters taking Northland. And we all know the right didn’t think he had a show.
It will be an interesting one to watch. Do Christchurch voters have an similar appetite for change – or will they cement in the corporate status quo?
You don’t need to wait, they won’t
Pity he is not in Auckland – at least then I would have someone to vote for.
+1
Second. He’s unlikely to beat Lianne Dalziel, and the other candidate is a joke candidate.
If Minto fails to win but still performs well (making it a close race) it will send a shiver up the spine of the establishment. As it will indicate the tide is turning.
The best news source in the UK.
Just watched that interview, it is excellent, thanks for highlighting this Paul.
And thanks to you for all the interesting sources you provide!
About that photo.
MSM using pro-al Nusra “media center” as source for war-propaganda
https://off-guardian.org/2016/08/18/media-using-pro-al-nusra-media-center-as-source-for-war-propaganda/
Yeah well, what’s that quote (from some US official?) on how friends are chosen by dint of what it is that is wanting to be achieved, and not on grounds of how good or bad, or right or wrong they may be?
I’ve no doubt ‘The Guardian’ and others will do a huge mea-culpa over their ‘Boy in an Ambulance’ story and earnestly seek to redress any “rush to war” sentiments that their coverage may have produced.
No doubt. No doubt at all. Oh look!
Flying pig!
In addition to Paul’s link, here’s another one with a bit more contextual depth.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/08/the-wounded-boy-in-orange-seat-another-staged-white-helmets-stunt.html#more
And the full 2 min video that the piece I’ve linked to references.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/08/17/the-stunned-bloodied-face-of-a-child-survivor-sums-up-the-horror-of-aleppo/?tid=pm_world_pop_b
Davies highlights case of mentally ill man
Labour MP Kelvin Davies has gone public about his role in helping a mentally ill man and argues it shows a need for better services.
“I stopped a guy from killing himself last night,” Mr Davies posted on his Facebook page.
He says the man, whom he knows, texted him from Dunedin to say “he’s had enough. He’s going to end it”.
Mr Davies said he stopped on the side of the road and talked to the man for an hour.
After a stand-off and confrontation police took the man to accident and emergency services where he got medical treatment for the harm he did to himself.
But there was no treatment for “his actual problem”, and he was given a taxi chit to get home where he had no power, heat or food.
He says the man is a hard worker and he has complex issues.
Mental health services “must do their job regardless” of how complex needs are.
<a href="https://nz.news.yahoo.com/top-stories/a/32395190/davies-highlights-case-of-mentally-ill-man/#page1
That yahoo article containts mistakes (Davis not Davies for a start).
Having a look at Davis’ FB page, good on him and Curran for making something happen. However he does have a bit of a hero complex and seems largely ignorant (or willfully ignorant) of why our mental health services are the way they are.
There are bloody good reasons for why the state can’t just section people willy nilly, and many of those reasons are because of serious abuses of power in the past. The big push towards community mental health in recent decades, supported by Labour, was meant to establish broader support so that it wouldn’t just be left to the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff services. Massive fail on that, and a classic example of neoliberal co-option of good ideas and well intentioned people.
Davis can bang his fist on the table over this all he likes, but until there is a govt that addresses poverty, and then works for the wellbeing of all people, then what he will get is tinkering around the edges.
Besides all that, the Southern DHB is in a mess and as a politician he should be addressing that. Blaming emergncy psych services for things that are often outside their control is not helping. Those psych services were failing under the last Labour govt too. If he is serious about this issue he needs to step up with some solid policy on what will make a difference. Making out that staff should break the law, esp where that law is designed to protect people, is just not on.
There’s a lot about caring for someone who’s unwell that isn’t as you’d expect, coming from normal society, and without wider family experience. The first few times you expect the process to more objective, like a broken arm. But it’s not, it’s this amazing, complex interaction of patient and clinician, fear rebellion and trust, liberty privacy and control, and someone who is tearing to pieces but can think everything is fine.
I’ve had to be part of catching my partner at the bottom of the cliff about every six years and am slowly learning more and more each time. I wish I knew what I know now 20 yeas ago, and I’ll learn a lot more yet. But Kelvin sounds like I did 15 years ago. We expect the process to work in a concise and determined way. It doesn’t, but it can and does work, in a patient centred way.
I hope that Kelvin will learn on from this experience to understand the process and journey that an unwell person follows to live within their world.
Thoughtful comment Graeme. I think it’s one of the downsides of the push to see mental illness as the same as physical disease. People end up thinking it should be that straightforward.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/16/secret-history-trumpism-donald-trump
Covers quite a bit of ground, but a few main points:
Trumpism has a deep-rooted appeal in a disenfranchised blue collar right excluded by a managerial technocratic ruling class post WWII (a class championed as the face of new conservatism by William F Buckley).
What it shares with the left, and makes it attractive to some nominal or former leftists is its opposition to neoliberalism and managerialism.
However, any pretence that the racism and something involving brown shirts and silly walks or a tendency to wear bedsheets and set crosses on fire is merely incidental or an embarrassing fringe is naive at best. Reactionary racial and sexual supremacism is intrinsic to the movement and many of the founding figures and current inciters are unashamed racist nationalists. An endorsement of Trump from the leader of the American N*** Party should be no surprise.
Mention is given to the publicity-hungry trolls of the “alt-right” such as Milo Yiannopoulos, who have seized on it as a stage to act out their own narcissism.
Makes an interesting parallel with this, examining the decline of liberal democracy:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/08/the_week_democracy_died_how_brexit_nice_turkey_and_trump_are_all_connected.html
A left wing journo was invited to Milo Yiannopoulos and the Republican shitshow… what she saw should scare anyone with functioning nervous system.
View at Medium.com
The Democratic Party could have easily avoided all of this by picking Bernie Sanders.
Instead they picked the weaker candidate, Clinton, who always polled much more weakly against Donald Trump.
So the US elite will reap the results of what they have sown.
While you may see Trump as a stick with which to beat the elites, that stick will beat the rest of the people too, particularly those with darker skins. That’s particularly callous schadenfreude.
Firstly, I think that under either Trump or Clinton, the multi-decades long income stagnation and collapse of the US middle class will continue.
Secondly, my point stands: if the Democratic Party wanted the stronger anti-Trump candidate, one who was polling far more strongly against Trump and carried far less questionable political baggage, they could have chosen him.
They didn’t.
Yes I’m afraid so. Bernie and Corbyn are actually the reasonable face of a wider movement, shoving them aside will not solve anything, it will just further delay the needed reforms that WILL occur one way or another.
The Republicans could have avoided this insanity as well, instead of sucking up to the Tea Party idiots and hamming it up for fox news. It’s a party on life support, i wonder if their Wall St backers are sick of them too.
Indeed. The Democrats said of the working class that “they have nowhere else to go” and the Republicans saw them as useful shock troops in the form of the Tea Party but never imagined that they’d get up on their hind legs.
If I were voting in the American election, I’d want to vote for a unicorn, not choosing Nixon over Mussolini. We can be grateful for MMP at least allowing alternative voices in government rather than the duopoly that results from FPP.
Analysis of polling by Nate Silver’s organisation, continually updated with useful explanations of its implications for the electoral college etc.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
Scott Adams has a far better grip on what is actually going on vis a vis Trump/Clinton than Nate Silver does.
Admittedly he described my former workplace very accurately in Dilbert…
Is this some joke that went over my head or is there a Scott Adams who is a statistician with extensive access to data and algorithms to process it and not a satirical cartoonist?
Well, Adams isn’t a statistician or pollster, you are correct in that.
But I think his rationale that a lot of people are refusing to interpersonally admit their support for Trump is worthy of note.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChKFeh8WMAIbMte.jpg
And his support for this assertion is…? Looking at his blog post on the subject, not much.
Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit” from The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark :
1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
Anecdotes and claims about having to say that he supported Clinton for his own physical safety(!). No facts given, merely anecdote and gut instinct.
2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
No evidence, hence no debate.
3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
Not an expert.
4. Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
Vague gestures in this direction, nothing substantive, resorts to gut instinct.
5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
Hoooo boy!
6. Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
NOPE.
7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.
Nope. Gut instinct again.
8. Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
Hypothesis has no evidence, supposes unexplained forces at work to an unknown degree.
9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
Too vague to be falsifiable, contains a bit of handwaving in the manner of “I could be wrong, but…”
So, I’ll have mine on rye with mustard.
Where’s the evidence that any of Sagan’s assertions and heuristics are relevant to and valid for predicting election results?
OK that’s just me being smartarse but Nate Silver’s organisation and algorithms also gave Trump a near zero percent chance of being where he is now.
NS was not even wrong on Trump.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cn5OAX4WgAQb5S7.jpg:large
He does not understand stochastic probability.
Sagan is simply summarising the universal scientific method. That’s how science works. It makes predictions based on the best available data at the time.
Naturally as time passes through the campaign, new events will happen, new data will be acquired. You ignore the fact that Silver is analysing polls, not measuring an invariable predetermined event. Clearly a campaign is not a static object but a process. In the early stages of the data gathering process, it is to be expected that wild results will be produced.
At this point the reasonable assumption based on quantified data and reasonable analysis and extrapolation is that Trump will still lose. There is a possibility that Trump may win, and it’s greater than the chance that a unicorn will win. However, I still think that Silver’s polling is far superior to Adam’s entrails and a Trump win is therefore very unlikely.
Thanks Poisson.
Rhinocrates, I ask you again, where is the evidence that using the “universal scientific method” to predict the outcome of US Presidential elections is statistically superior than any other method?
How is it that Nate Silver’s organisation can assign 6:1 odds in favour of Clinton and have that taken seriously, when he has been outright wrong about Trump relatively recently.
IMO it’s going to be an easy Trump win come November. I can accept that you believe that opinion flies in the face of all the objective scientific evidence.
Good read though tough – shows what is really happening and it is scarey. Trump and his minions a true horror story.
How the world sees Trump –
Ireland
Bulgaria
Canada
Austria
Australia
Scotland
UAE
I tell you what though they just played a bit of a his last couple of his speech’s on prime news , now if i was someone who paid little attention to politics what he was saying would of grabbed my attention.
And all clinton did was tweet a sulky tweet inresponse.
The Labour Mayor of London tells Corbyn to leave.
Even though Corbyn will win against Owens.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/20/ditch-jeremy-corbyn-before-too-late-sadiq-khan-tells-labour
Khan is putting his mark in as Corbyn’s successor.
Once the inevitable purge and split occurs, of course.
What a little shit head Khan is.
Apparently Corbyn makes Labour so unelectable that Khan went on to win the Mayoralty. Oh wait.
Another Labour 1%’er shit head.
Brighter future.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11698404
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/21/death-of-neoliberalism-crisis-in-western-politics
brilliant stuff
“…Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent essay in Foreign Affairs: “‘Populism’ is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don’t like.” Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both.”
yes, he’s no slouch…nailed it.
“The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labour movement. They are not synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/destiny-church-co-founder-splashes-150k-mercedes-her-second-2016
‘Imelda’ Tamaki…….a disgustingly malodorous nugget of over-coiffed shit.
“If we cannot halt the emissions of carbon dioxide, what can we do?
In the end, the only hope we have is to find a way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere once it has got there. Even the IPCC has admitted that we will have to find a way to extract carbon dioxide from the air. The trouble is that they don’t just how we can do that. The most favoured scheme is known as BECCS: bio-energy with carbon capture and storage. Essentially, you plant trees and bushes over vast swaths of ground. These grow, absorbing carbon dioxide in the process. Then you burn the wood to run power plants while trapping, liquefying and storing the carbon dioxide that is released.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-will-be-ice-free-in-summer-next-year
We can halt emissions. And even if we did have CCS tech we’d still need to do that. What part of finite planet do people not get?
the part where they have to change their lifestyle.
Ok, so people don’t want to change their lifestyles and this makes them think they can defy physics? Some people sure, but I think mostly it’s more a process of desperation. My reply was to point out that there are better thing to do with that desperation than go to fantasty land.
Im more inclined to think its a case of not wishing to think about it or being more focused on perceived more pressing needs…..that can be considered fantasyland (or denial) but it is a prevalent state.
There’s a few other possibilities. For just one instance, currently concrete is a major climate nasty mostly due to fossil fuels burned for process heat and the CO2 released by chemical reactions in cement production, However, concrete also absorbs CO2 back out of the atmosphere as it cures.
Simply changing the process heat source to renewable electricity plus capture and storage of the CO2 released during calcination would turn conventional concrete into a small net carbon sink rather than a large emitter.
But there’s also processes that create unconventional cements suitable for concrete that absorb CO2 during manufacture, rather than releasing it. Which would be even better.
http://arizonaenergy.org/News_10/News_Feb10/Calera%20and%20Novacem%20use%20concrete%20to%20capture%20CO2.htm
Sorry, that was intended to be a reply to Pat at 17.
there appear to be many proposals for carbon capture, however as far as I can see those investigating the options all seem to come to same conclusion that what is currently feasible (even potentially) lack the capacity to remove the volumes required….that may not be so into the future but there is also a time constraint factor…no point in having a process in 50 -100 years time if we’re already extinct.
Personally I reckon human extinction in 50 to 100 years is very unlikely. Either massive nuclear war, or the oceans turning anoxic (apparently has happened before so non-zero probability). I reckon the sight of billions dying in the tropics will scare the rest of the planet to take enough action that there will still be habitable refuge areas in high latitudes.
if billions are dying in the tropics (or anywhere) I would suggest it will be past the point of no return…..as to anoxic oceans we may be well on the way already….when the food chain collapses the resulting extinction events will be rapid so 50 -100 years may seem hyperbolic but not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility.