Middle Earth, as my colleague quipped: it’s like that’s what we’re aiming for, one massive hole in the ground. Our legal landscape is changing, with mining in view. It’s not just the EEZ, or the RMA, or the Crown Minerals Act - it’s all of them. The ground is shifting under resource management.
Read MoreRMA at the heart of our nature
Even more significant than the government's former ideas about mining our national parks, a long-awaited government advisory group report would spell disaster for the Resource Management Act if it were implemented
Read MoreThe devil and the deep blue sea
What the Ministerial amendments proposed to the EEZ Bill tell us about RMA reform plans - or, how a few lines on a page could change New Zealand's natural world
Read MoreAnd so it begins
On chooks, the planting of blossom trees, and building an ecological movement from the ground up
Read MoreWhen you're in a hole, keep digging
The questions Energy Minister Phil Heatley should have been asked on The Nation; and why former Minister David Parker, bless him, still doesn’t get it
Read MorePlanet Earth is blue
Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Read MoreExclusively Economic Zone bad for industry, says Forest & Bird
The Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, currently passing through its remaining stages in Parliament, helps Big Oil less than you might think
Read MoreRemarks on 40 years
I spoke last night to the Values - Green Party party, and book launch. This is, more or less, what I said.
Read MoreBeyond Today: a values story, and the Greens’ story
Beyond Today: a values story is the Green party’s story. On the Greens’ fortieth birthday, it says Values is a history of which the party should be very proud, and values are the new politics
Read MoreThe Exclusive Economic Zone: for sale
In which the government invites anyone who can pay enough into our offshore marine environment. The Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill does not "protect and preserve" the environment. It states its price
Read MoreCri de coeur
On December 30 I wrote a draft of this for myself. I was not going to post it. This changed my mind: The Joy of Quiet, published the same day in the New York Times
Read MoreConservation lands: resources, naturally?
All of the government’s signs are pointing the same way: relocating conservation and the Department of Conservation within the “natural resources” sector, the better to “streamline and simplify” its activities
Read MoreThe post-election outlook on conservation lands
In preference to weeping, I try to count conservation blessings, and plan my new career as a lobbyist
Read MoreTowards a new theory of the Greens: transition times
The global green change needed is desperately urgent. Paradoxically, the fastest and best way to achieve it locally might be more tortoise than hare
Read MoreTowards a new theory of the Greens: neither left nor right
In which I try explaining why the Greens are neither left nor right, why they never have been, and why that is important to their future and ours
Read MoreTowards a new theory of the Greens: the election campaign
The Greens’ vibe has changed, but have they lost grip on values with a small and large V? For all the strengths and wins of the 2011 election campaign, it also failed
Read MoreThe turning tide for fossil fools
As black waves wash in to the Mount today from Rena, and political gods laugh in the face of adversity, has the tide turned for our PM and risen for the Greens?
Read MoreMine | No mine: the fight for Denniston
The fight over the different kinds of wealth on the “impoverished” Denniston plateau is about more than just Denniston. Chances are, it could finish in the Supreme Court
Read MoreThe seal basher, and the hang ‘im high club
Twelve months in prison for clubbing to death 23 seals, injuring others, leaves nobody with anything to celebrate.
Read MoreCars’ cost: not smart transport
Some imaginary reasons, some ideological reasons, and some surprising ones: why we don’t follow rich Switzerland’s lead by investing in public transport
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