RMA

How fast shall we drive over the cliff? NZ’s ETS watered down (again)

by Mr February September 4, 2012

Simon Johnson looks at the Government’s amendments to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme and concludes we are arguing about what gear to drive in as we speed towards the cliff. The Government has kindly given us the opportunity to make a submission about how fast fast we should go over the emissions cliff. Time [...]

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Moon-walking with due legal process to a very hot place – Neil Armstrong, coal mining & global warming

by Mr February August 30, 2012

On the same day as the death of Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to step onto the Moon, became public, the NZ High Court moonwalked its way to an off-the-world moment. It decided that greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are off-limits in the planning for an open cast coal mine. That’s as just as [...]

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Zombie ETS infects RMA with climate insanity

by Mr February May 7, 2012

Simon Johnson/aka Mr February argues that the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme has become living-dead “zombie” legislation that infects other statutes with its own virulent climate change insanity. The example is a recent decision by the Environment Court that it can’t consider climate change impacts of coal mining as described by James Hansen in the [...]

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Stern talking (but not Nick)

by Bryan Walker March 31, 2009

At the UNFCCC Climate Change talks currently under way in Bonn the US Envoy Todd Stern has unequivocally announced the role the US will be playing in the time ahead.  It is an extraordinary transformation. The hopes raised by Obama still look strong. Some extracts follow. First, the opening remarks:

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Telling porkies to Parliament

by Gareth March 24, 2009

The Emissions Trading Scheme Review committee has released the first batch of submissions it has received — those made by organisations and individuals who have already made their presentations to the committee. There are some heavy hitters in there: from New Zealand’s science and policy community there’s the Climate Change Centre (a joint venture between [...]

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Things are gonna change (the morning after)

by Gareth November 10, 2008

On the morning after I was more interested in the rugby than agonising over the entrails of Saturday night’s election result, but today it’s worth traversing what new Zealand’s new political landscape might bring for climate policy. For the wider picture, I recommend Russell Brown’s take at Hard News and Gordon Campbell’s at Scoop; they [...]

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The green green grass of home

by Gareth September 24, 2008

Back at my desk briefly (it’s a hectic week), some catching up in progress. The Going West panel session on Saturday morning was fun to do, and well received. There will be a recording available (for download, I hope) and I’ll link to that if/when it’s available. The climate change legal summit in Te Papa [...]

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Celia of the seals

by Gareth August 13, 2008

It appears that my wish is someone’s command. Last month, blogging on the continuing break-up of the Wilkins ice shelf, I noted a reference to “seal hats” as data gathering devices and expressed a wish to see them. And here they are! Little devices glued to the heads of elephant seals that gather data as [...]

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Ice ice baby

by Gareth August 5, 2008

The fat lady’s not yet in the building, but her limo’s outside the theatre. There’s another five or six weeks of melting to go, but there’s more than just sea ice melting in the Arctic, and more than my few meagre wagers riding on how summer turns out ‘oop North. Here’s a compendium of interesting [...]

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Ballad of broken seas

by Gareth August 3, 2008

The Ministry for the Environment released an updated Coastal Hazards and Climate Change manual for local government last week, based on work done by NIWA. It incorporates the latest NZ thinking on where sea-levels are heading. If you’re planning to build something that has to last until the end of the century (and that covers [...]

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