Everybody except Nick Smith thinks the emissions trading scheme is dumb. Unhappy with mainstream climate change policy responses, environmentalists are looking elsewhere. Here’s a new idea, that we’ll hear more of in 2011: an election year idea, all about tax and cuts
Read MoreThe ashes downstream of Pike River
The metaphorical Pike River post-mortem has started, without waiting for the Royal Commission and others’ findings, in some defiance of the truth, and the incendiary risks
Read MoreSmall is beautiful: economy of resources, and the politics of enough
Economy, by definition, means prudently managing resources, yet in practice growth consumes them, unsustainably. We need a new narrative, say the Greens, that decouples progress from growth: this might be a myth and it is a gamble, but so is growth
Read MoreThoughts on Green growth, from a gardener
Among the many things people don’t get about the Greens and the green movement is -- it’s organic. This is not just a nice conceit. Greens live and breathe above and below ground, which makes them resilient
Read MoreDavid Cunliffe: a political vision?
David Cunliffe offers personal observations from the Greens’ economic conference, on how to do good — “to do good, first we must win” — and possibly, also on how to win
Read MoreDavid Suzuki: an elder’s vision
David Suzuki says by ignoring warnings of over-consumption and its dire consequences, we are following 99.9999% of our fellow animal species to extinction; and the Greens convene a cross-party economic conference, populated mostly by Greens
Read MoreThe last and least loveliest: lignite
When global crude oil sources are ranked and graphed by size and production cost, lignite coal is among the biggest, the most expensive, and the last one on the list. Lignite and Solid Energy need peak oil; it’s a lifeline for them, not a threat
Al Morrison’s conser-vision
DOC’s Director-General has a new ‘bluegreen’ conservation vision: follow the money to business partnership, because the country’s broke, and along the way further downsize his own little threadbare empire. What kind of Chief Executive is this?
Read MoreCoal conversion recipe: whip ‘em, and spin it a bit
Solid Energy wants to open up ‘new energy’ and other things: lignite resources, public debate, the company’s own mind, apparently. Shame those dangerous radicals don’t have much to say worth hearing. Shame if they had to be booted out, for asking the wrong questions
Read More“Fonterra fears cow cubicles could mar brand,” eh?
Fonterra’s been happily ‘feedlot farming’ indoors in China for nearly three years, and raising their calves in cages. Um, so remind me again … what was it they said, last December, about the ‘cubicle’ farms?
Read MoreA public submission, to the biodiversity Guardians
As Convention on Biological Diversity parties meet to hammer out new resolutions, having failed on most of the old ones, UK paper the Guardian is compiling a list of action points, and demanding, you know, action
Read MoreFighting dirty, dairy’s udderhand tactics
In the latest skirmish, the Mackenzie cubicle dairy applicants — or, as they prefer to say, ‘covered farms’ — have turned an apparent setback into a tactical mini-triumph
Read MoreGreenpeace: Fonterror campaign
Greenpeace’s old mojo, zooming about in front of Japanese ships, was getting a bit tired; anyway, they’re constructive parties to the anti-whaling talks now, implicating Fonterra in rainforest clearance instead
Read MoreClimate carbon negotiations: a black hole, and a new idea
If there is no post-Kyoto climate deal, of the kind attempted at Copenhagen, few if any will care. Jeanette Fitzsimons, back in the country and back at work, tells Pundit why she doubts Kyoto and the ETS can help us. She wants to start again
Read MoreHigh country accord: save the Mackenzie country
Farmers and conservationists agree, the Mackenzie must be saved. In simple terms, the question is: should it stay brown, or turn green? Farmer Richard Peacocke and Forest & Bird discuss
Read MoreAll at sea: bladder kelp cutting, with Phil Heatley
“Wild kelp harvest is native forest logging of the sea”? Or just like “mowing the lawn”? It had marine science and conservationists in an uproar today, so what’s it all about?
Read MoreThe land that time forgot, and govt economics 101
Forest & Bird delivers a lesson in economical resource use — simplifying and streamlining, if you will — that doesn’t involve balancing the environment and the economy; and a reminder of the conservation job, put on ice for a quarter century
Read MoreCarbon waits for science, again; but the planet won’t
We waited and, in one sense, wasted decades, scientifically establishing carbon emissions, and their effects. Now its about sequestration, on and in the ground: a different issue, yet the same
Read MoreAustralian Tim Flannery tells us what he really thinks
Tim Flannery — professor, former Australian of the year, David Attenborough-acclaimed scientist and explorer, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council — offers some free frank advice to New Zealand
Read MoreSoil carbon: pay dirt, or dead duck?
Papers show an official abundance of caution persuaded New Zealand to downplay soil as a carbon sink, instead of bringing it into the ETS, as a carrot for farmers
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