Latest articles on climate action
1.5° locked-and-loaded and looking down the barrel at >2°
With every fibre and electrified-transit solution
Aucklanders once took an average of more than 400 public-transport trips per year. In 1945, with a sixth of the population, Aucklanders were taking nearly 120 million trips, compared to today’s paltry 90 million boardings. Not that all Aucklanders should be…
Future Mahurangi transport network feedback
Mahurangi Action’s feedback pro forma on Warkworth’s future transport network is good to go. Members, and readers generally, are warmly encouraged to use the pro forma as-is or as a starting point for their own feedback, and to put their oars in…
This might have been one more for the roads
September’s town-hall talk is now cancelled, and possibly the balance of this year’s. The September slot was pencilled in for the topic of paedophilia awareness—apparently paedophile networks operate locally—but no subsequent response was…
One billion trees and bugger the science
In 2004, $3 million over 5 years sounded like all Mahurangi’s Christmases had come at once. But a back-of-a-seed-packet calculation strongly suggested that the $3 million the former Auckland Regional Council had budgeted would barely touch the sides, when it…
Faith in the 1% and fighting the 80
Photovoltaics have a huge future and have grown enormously, to about 1% of global energy use. Banking heavily upon it, Germany has plunged it’s poor into energy poverty, by shuttering nuclear, not because of the risk or impact on health, but to pander…
Forlorn futility of faith-based climate action
One person’s demagogue is another person’s saviour, and, for many, the Elon Musk credibility needle will have finally flicked from where it has been firmly stuck on f, to e. For most students, in this age of social-media-supercharged celebrity, learning…
Proposed zero-carbon bill submission
Comment on the proposed zero-carbon bill closes at 5 pm on 19 July. The following pro forma is provided by the Mahurangi Magazine in the earnest hope that the resultant legislation is exponentially more substantive than a zero-carbon-by-2050-target…
Proposed carbon bill zero-action
Generation Zero is ecstatic. But over a proposed zero-carbon bill that clings cravenly to the ineffectual, at best, emissions-trading-scheme approach. To be fair, Generation Zero’s enthusiasm is primarily for having succeeded in selling, to the new…
Thirty years later, what needs to change
Thirty years ago, while the Midwest withered in massive drought and East Coast temperatures exceeded 100°F, I testified to the Senate as a senior nasa scientist about climate change. I said that ongoing global warming was outside the range of natural…
stv supercity shake-up, then Wellington
Mayor Goff was elected by barely 18% of registered voters. Len Brown at least, won 47.8% of votes cast, but only because voters were then still in the dark about his grubby use of Auckland Council property. But the bigger crime of both men, and of the Royal…
Visiting Aotearoa for all the right reasons
Neither of New Zealand’s two main industries is currently sustainable. Its once-vaunted agricultural industry, a proud part of the green revolution, is now a climate delinquent, due to the white gold-rush. Tourism, which continues to outdistance dairy as…
Nothing stopping Labour unequivocally claiming climate
His frustration was palpable. Following his party’s first electoral foray, when more than 98% of the populace proved to be impervious, the Rodney candidate declared: “What we need is a decent nuclear accident, then they’ll vote Values.” Sadly, the statement…
Reimagining the roads of Mahurangi
Roads, historically, were not about cars. They were not even about private vehicles, until the last 100 of human civilisation’s 5500-year existence. So perhaps the Labour Party’s pandering to Penlink is understandable, as it seeks to wrest more of the...
Climate-reaction rubber meets the road
New Zealanders have just demonstrated the perfect problem, perfectly. After three decades of denial and procrastination, including nine years of Clark-led Labour government inaction, Jacinda Ardern has announced transport policy timidly…
Odds against tomorrow without ultimate sacrifice
As if its bureaucrats needed any encouragement. Trump’s America now has its Environmental Protection Authority peddling the equivalent of Lisa Simpson’s Ignorital©. The agency requires its officials to lace their public utterances with phrases contrived to…