forestry

Tall trees

by Gareth July 27, 2009

Setting emissions targets means more than just making direct emissions cuts — it also means growing our carbon sinks. Climate change minister Nick Smith seems to want to ignore this, insisting (once more) in his interview with Kathryn Ryan this morning that because NZ’s emissions were now running 24% above 1990 levels, that a 40% [...]

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Blackleg miner

by Gareth May 9, 2009

Solid Energy, NZ’s state-owned coal mining company, is promoting an alternative to an economy wide emissions trading scheme. According to Carbon News, the approach is being “heavily peddled to policy makers and others in Wellington”, and it is seen to have “great simplistic appeal”. Carbon News has made the document, A Durable Climate Change Strategy [...]

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Games without frontiers

by Gareth January 12, 2009

Jeux sans frontières realised in Clim’ City, an interesting learning game with obvious antecedents from Bordeaux’s Cap Sciences centre: reorganise the energy sources and economy of this French city and its surroundings – from ski field to beach resort – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without crippling the economy. According to the Technology Review story, [...]

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Sitting in limbo

by Gareth December 18, 2008

Parliament has risen for the summer recess, and New Zealand’s climate policy is reduced to a train wreck of repealed legislation and uncertainty about the emissions trading scheme. PM John Key confirmed under persistent questioning by Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons yesterday that the ETS would not actually be put on hold. From Hansard: Jeanette Fitzsimons: [...]

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Woodman, spare that tree (foresters attitudes to the ETS)

by Piers November 25, 2008

As one would expect from a rurally based sector, foresters are a conservative lot. I don’t say that disrespectfully, because societies – for the sake of stability – need a balanced mixture of change-makers and change-resisters. But it did mean that, when in 1989 I started work on Climate Change and forestry, I met with [...]

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Knock on wood

by Gareth November 25, 2008

Rumblings about the forestry industry’s disappointment with the “suspension” of the ETS have not been slow to surface, but as I’m no expert on the business (though I do like trees) I asked well-known forestry consultant Piers Maclaren if he could provide Hot Topic’s readers with an overview of what’s going on. I must have [...]

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Paint it, black

by Gareth July 9, 2008

Interesting to see how one opinion poll can say different things to different people. Over the weekend, Fran O’Sullivan in The Herald referred to a survey commissioned by the NZ Institute of Economic Research (they of the mostly useless recent report on the economics of the ETS). Here’s what Fran noticed: The detailed survey shows [...]

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Friday on my mind (once more)

by Gareth June 6, 2008

Before you ask, the picture shows the shell of a coccolithophore, and it’s in trouble. We’ve been adding a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and a good chunk of it has ended up in the oceans. The water is getting more acidic, and some sea creatures are finding it harder to build their [...]

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The law won

by Gareth April 4, 2008

The LexisNexis legal symposium on climate change was an interesting couple of days. Some excellent presentations – including a particularly fine exposition of the science of climate from NIWA’s Katja Riedel, and a very good summary of the post-Kyoto options from Jonathon Boston. Peter Weir from the Forest Owners Association presented a characteristically direct assessment [...]

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They would say that (again), wouldn’t they?

by Gareth February 5, 2008

There are times when specially commissioned economic forecasts are a useful contribution to debate on emissions reductions, and times when they are not. The latest, commissioned by the Business Roundtable and the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association (Pepanz) from Adolf Stroombergen at Infometrics, is a fine example of the latter. The numbers allow Roger Kerr [...]

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