Category: Climate politics

Westward Ho: Day 2 – the luxury cruise

What sacrifices, what deprivations we have to suffer to chase away the planet destroyers!

Woke to Mt Taranaki sharp against a clear sky. Breakfast in the sunshine on deck on a near flat sea after a night rocked to sleep by a gentle roll as we motored up the west coast from Wellington. Downside of so little wind was having to burn some fuel but it did give us time to get our sea legs. And the Ignoble Bob Douglas (did I tell you that is the name of the drilling ship? I added the Ig bit for truth enhancement) will be burning enormously more than we ever could.

Last night we picked up Niamh and James from Dunedin just off Mana Island. They had agreed at a few hours’ notice to join us on behalf of their generation, the twenty-somethings, and give us some age balance.They’ve been active in Oil-free Otago which will be the next recipient of Anadarko’s attention, in January – but 35 miles off their coast, compared with 120 miles off Raglan.They have the same concerns, the same issues as us – the potential for devastation of the coast, and the certainty of climate change if this crazy project goes ahead. So now we are seven.

Sipped excellent coffee (I said this is a luxury cruise) and watched a skua, several small albatross and huge flocks of maybe terns (that was the general consensus but none of us are ornithologists) wheeling and feeding as the water boiled with fish. Looking in vain, so far, for whales and dolphins. Tried to banish the mental image of them all spread out on the beach covered with oil.
This afternoon the wind picked up and we’ve had wonderful sailing at 6-7 knots past Cape Egmont and now veering out to sea. We haven’t even lost cell phone link with the mainland yet, but will soon. These sweet conditions may not last, but having been conditioned to expect storms and wet and cold I’m feeling very fortunate.

It feels very like the calm before the storm. We will sail all night and link up tomorrow with the other boats at “the spot marked x”. (You won’t find it on any map.) Then it’s anyone’s guess.

Jeanette

Lip service: NZ government infested with climate denial

Over the last few years I’ve documented the current NZ government’s lackadaisical attitude to climate change policy. They’ve gutted the emissions trading scheme and dismantled sensible initiatives, ensuring that NZ emissions are on course to grow steeply. Last night, TV3 News asked three senior cabinet ministers whether they believed in the reality of climate change, and two of the three couldn’t quite find it in their hearts to endorse simple reality. Here’s my transcription of their responses:

Gerry Brownlee (minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, Transport, Leader of the House, #3 in the hierarchy):

Well, I think climate change is something that has happened always, so to simply come up and say, look, it’s man-made, is an interesting prospect.

Bill English (deputy PM, finance minister, #2 in the hierarchy):

There’s some impact… [edit] we should uncritically follow the Green’s extreme views about these things, well, many of us don’t.

By way of contrast, climate change minister Tim Groser was unequivocal:

Absolutely, the evidence is overwhelming — you’d have to be denying reality…

Given that I’ve been critical of Groser’s stance on NZ climate policy, it’s refreshing that he feels free to be so blunt in his acceptance of the reality of the problem. He is, after all, a skilled diplomat, and knows that if he were to tell the world that climate change was “an interesting prospect”, his peers in the international community would consider him to be a complete tit. It’s perhaps a good job that English and Brownlee don’t have to front up to the world on climate matters, or their self-esteem might suffer.

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Westward Ho: With the Anadarko Flotilla – day one

JeanetteTiama

I’m really pleased to welcome Jeanette Fitzsimons to Hot Topic as a guest blogger. The environmentalist and former co-leader of the NZ Greens is on board the yacht Tiama, sailing out into the Tasman to protest against deep water oil exploration. She will be providing us with regular updates on the flotilla’s progress.

What a fabulous send off. A dozen kayakers, wearing penguin suits, lined up and waved us on our way as we left the harbour. Several small boats sailed with us. About 100 well wishers gathered on the wharf; speeches in support from Green and independent MPs, oil free Wellington, Ora Taiao (climate and health council); two sails spread out on the ground covered with signatures and messages in support of our mission; and home baked cookies and chocolate cake delivered to the wharf by old friends.

I’m on the Tiama, a 50 ft cutter-rigged steel sloop built by skipper Henk, veteran of many campaigns. With us is Bunny from Greenpeace, Barclay who will make a sailor of me by the end of the voyage, and Pascale from France with the camera and the laptop. Later tonight we will pick up two more before heading out to the site 120 miles west of Raglan where Texas oil giant Anadarko has been invited, nay begged, even subsidised, by our government to try a repeat exercise of what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

The Baltazar is sailing with us, skippered by Andy Whittaker, and we plan to rendezvous on Saturday on site with four other boats which left from Auckland, Bay of Islands and Bluff.

Anadarko says that coming out to their drilling site is dangerous. Yeah, right. Who’s causing the danger, drilling under 1500 m of water, knowing the very similar Macondo Prospect they part-owned in the Gulf of Mexico blew out, spewing 650,000 tonnes of oil?

If that happened here, it would take weeks for emergency clean up equipment to arrive from overseas. While we waited the oil would spread, contaminating our coast from Taranaki to the Hokianga and poisoning the whole marine web of life: including our fisheries, seabirds, whales, the Maui dolphin and coastal communities.

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TDB today: typhoon tears

In this week’s Daily Blog post — Typhoon tears: we need an emergency climate pathway — I focus on the tragic events in the Philippines through the lens of the moving speech at COP19 in Warsaw by Yeb Saño, the Philippines Climate Change Commissioner. Comments over there, please.

Crusaders of the lost wallet: NZ’s climate cranks lose costs case

News reaches HT (hat tip to Rob Taylor) that the Appeal Court has rejected the NZ Climate “Science Education” Trust’s appeal for a reduction in the costs awarded against them when they lost their original case against the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research over the New Zealand temperature record. This latest judgement finds that the NZCSET “did not act reasonably”, and has “mounted something of a crusade against NIWA’s records” (excerpts courtesy of Rob Taylor here).

The judgement comes as no surprise to members of the reality-based community, but the final failure of their futile finagling leaves Barry Brill, Richard Treadgold and the trustees of the NZCSET with questions to answer. I posed three, as yet unanswered, questions last time I covered this issue. To keep things simple for these bears of little legal brain, this time I’ll only ask two.

Are you planning to meet the costs awarded against you? If not, why do you think you should be above the law you so egregiously abused in bringing the case in the first place?

The trustees of the NZCSET are Bryan Leyland, Doug Edmeades and Terry Dunleavy. One rather hopes they have deep pockets…