Tag: Jeanette Fitzsimons

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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Will the last business lobbyist to leave please turn out the light at the end of the ETS tunnel

turn out the light at the end of the tunnelIn this post Simon Johnson aka Mr February channels his inner General Westmoreland and his Vietnam flashbacks to look at National’s latest change to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS). Parliament has just (8 November) passed amendments that indefinitely defer any greenhouse gas obligations for agriculture and indefinitely discount obligations to industries.This is a ‘last helicopters off the Saigon hotel roof’ point in the sad history of the always-doomed-to-fail New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme.

According to cultural folklore the humiliating end of American engagement in the Vietnam war was foreshadowed by graffiti;

Will the last person out of the tunnel please turn out the light?

Or perhaps:

Would the last Marine to leave Vietnam please turn out the light at the end of the tunnel?

This was in frank contrast to the early (with hindsight, unjustified) optimism of General Westmoreland, who had said in 1968 that he could see the light at the end of the tunnel of the war in Vietnam.

So why am I writing about graffiti from a war that ended 37 years ago? Well, to make a ‘bonkers’ analogy with the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, of course! Getting the NZETS established was of course more or less a civil war, and when the Labour Government in its final days in office in late 2008 finally coalesced a coalition of compromise to pass the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading) Amendment Act 2008, it seemed there was ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ in terms of reducing GHG emissions.

However, with the adoption last Thursday afternoon (8 November) of National’s latest emitter-inspired fiddle; the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Act, I believe we can now just be honest with ourselves and see the latest amendments to the NZETS as the last helicopter off the hotel roof and the last act of the NZ emissions trading approach, which was futile from the beginning.

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A snake swallows the elephant in the room and then flogs a dead horse – climate change politics in NZ Election 2011

Possible the longest ever title on a Hot Topic post: Simon Johnson continues our series on the NZ election by examining the entrails…

So whats happening with climate change in the election?

Elephant swallowed by the snake
I was originally thinking about writing a wonkish post comparing climate change policies between parties. You know the sort of thing. Which parties have policies that reflect the seriousness of the impacts the science predicts? Who has got the science wrong? Which politicians are all talk and no action? What are the minute details of the each party’s NZETS policies. Such as delays to sector entry dates, partial price obligations and varying free unit allocation regimes in the . MEGO, anyone? (My Eyes Glaze Over….)

Then I thought, Nah! I am looking through the wrong end of the telescope. You know what really strikes me about climate change in the election? It’s the absence. It is as if climate change is nearly completely absent from the campaign. When climate change does pop up, it’s portrayed in simplistic soundbites.

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Hansen in NZ: final roundup

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Here’s a high quality video of Jim Hansen’s talk at the University of Canterbury last month (excellent work by the audiovisual team at UC). Well worth watching, if only because it provides a succinct summary of Hansen’s current thinking. As Dr. Chuck Kutscher of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US said:

If you want to know the scientific consensus on global warming, read the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But if you want to know what the consensus will be ten years from now, read Jim Hansen’s work.

Hansen has also published his open letter to John Key (at HT here), with added observations on his time in New Zealand. I particularly enjoyed his heartfelt reference (in a footnote) to his minder, former Green Party leader Jeanette Fitzsimons:

[…] slave-driver Jeanette Fitzsimons unceremoniously routing me out of bed at 6 or 7 AM every day to get moving to the next town – not exactly a case of sipping piña colada on a beach.

See also: R0B at The Standard draws attention to a podcast of Hansen’s talk at Otago University, who notes that he described his meeting with Environment Minister Nick Smith as “a very unpleasant discussion”. With the recent news that John Key has given his support to lignite mining in Southland, it’s clear that the disconnect between reality and the New Zealand government is growing ever greater.

[Climate Show interview with Jim Hansen here. Hat tip to Jason Box for the Kutscher quote.]

Jim Hansen to tour NZ: dates announced

James Hansen will be touring New Zealand next month, giving a public lecture entitled “Climate Change: a scientific, moral and legal issue” in Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington, Dunedin, Gore and Christchurch (schedule below the fold). Coal and lignite will be a major focus of his visit, and he’ll be participating in a symposium on “the future of coal” in Wellington on May 17th. Solid Energy’s CEO Don Elder will also be there, which should guarantee an interesting divergence of opinion. Hansen will also visit Southland to see the site of Solid Energy’s proposed lignite developments. Hot Topic and The Climate Show hope to be able to catch up with Jim at some point on his tour. I want to ask him about the Eemian… 😉

Hansen’s tour is being sponsored by a number of groups, including 350.org, Greenpeace, Organic Systems NZ, Oxfam, The Pure Advantage (business leaders group), the Institute of Policy Studies, and a number of interested academics and individuals. Announcing the tour, Jeanette Fitzsimons, spokesperson for the coalition bringing Dr Hansen to New Zealand said “Dr Hansen will explain why we cannot get climate change under control and preserve a decent future for our grandchildren unless we leave most of the remaining coal in the ground”. Amen to that.

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