Delegates came home upbeat from the Cancún climate talks, although the Copenhagen Accord texts were hardly altered by the Cancún Agreements. Were there good reasons for optimism? Or were the “rounds of cheering and applause,” “at times near euphoria,” psychological symptoms of something else?
Read MoreConservation
The ashes downstream of Pike River
The metaphorical Pike River post-mortem has started, without waiting for the Royal Commission and others’ findings, in some defiance of the truth, and the incendiary risks
Read MoreDeepwater oil on Nature’s Coast
Two offshore spills in less than a month – but
David Cunliffe: a political vision?
David Cunliffe offers personal observations from the Greens’ economic conference, on how to do good — “to do good, first we must win” — and possibly, also on how to win
Read MoreDavid Suzuki: an elder’s vision
David Suzuki says by ignoring warnings of over-consumption and its dire consequences, we are following 99.9999% of our fellow animal species to extinction; and the Greens convene a cross-party economic conference, populated mostly by Greens
Read MoreThe last and least loveliest: lignite
When global crude oil sources are ranked and graphed by size and production cost, lignite coal is among the biggest, the most expensive, and the last one on the list. Lignite and Solid Energy need peak oil; it’s a lifeline for them, not a threat
Richard Peacocke on the Mackenzie Basin cubicle farming row
Why debate the greening of the Mackenzie Basin when in reality it is being overrun by weeds and wilding pines and the topsoil is being blown away?
Read MoreAl Morrison’s conser-vision
DOC’s Director-General has a new ‘bluegreen’ conservation vision: follow the money to business partnership, because the country’s broke, and along the way further downsize his own little threadbare empire. What kind of Chief Executive is this?
Read MoreCoal conversion recipe: whip ‘em, and spin it a bit
Solid Energy wants to open up ‘new energy’ and other things: lignite resources, public debate, the company’s own mind, apparently. Shame those dangerous radicals don’t have much to say worth hearing. Shame if they had to be booted out, for asking the wrong questions
Read MoreA public submission, to the biodiversity Guardians
As Convention on Biological Diversity parties meet to hammer out new resolutions, having failed on most of the old ones, UK paper the Guardian is compiling a list of action points, and demanding, you know, action
Read MoreFighting dirty, dairy’s udderhand tactics
In the latest skirmish, the Mackenzie cubicle dairy applicants — or, as they prefer to say, ‘covered farms’ — have turned an apparent setback into a tactical mini-triumph
Read MoreGreenpeace: Fonterror campaign
Greenpeace’s old mojo, zooming about in front of Japanese ships, was getting a bit tired; anyway, they’re constructive parties to the anti-whaling talks now, implicating Fonterra in rainforest clearance instead
Read MoreHigh country accord: save the Mackenzie country
Farmers and conservationists agree, the Mackenzie must be saved. In simple terms, the question is: should it stay brown, or turn green? Farmer Richard Peacocke and Forest & Bird discuss
Read MoreAll at sea: bladder kelp cutting, with Phil Heatley
“Wild kelp harvest is native forest logging of the sea”? Or just like “mowing the lawn”? It had marine science and conservationists in an uproar today, so what’s it all about?
Read MoreThe land that time forgot, and govt economics 101
Forest & Bird delivers a lesson in economical resource use — simplifying and streamlining, if you will — that doesn’t involve balancing the environment and the economy; and a reminder of the conservation job, put on ice for a quarter century
Read MoreCarbon waits for science, again; but the planet won’t
We waited and, in one sense, wasted decades, scientifically establishing carbon emissions, and their effects. Now its about sequestration, on and in the ground: a different issue, yet the same
Read MoreSoil carbon: pay dirt, or dead duck?
Papers show an official abundance of caution persuaded New Zealand to downplay soil as a carbon sink, instead of bringing it into the ETS, as a carrot for farmers
Read MoreWhat Lord Stern really thinks of our ETS
Lord Stern's visit to New Zealand last week didn't upset any apple-carts, but it again raised the question of whether or not New Zealand's ETS is a world leader
Read MoreOn New Chums Beach
The calls to save New Chums Beach risk snatching defeat from the jaws of conservation victory, by romanticising pristine examples. Surely we can do better
Read MoreZeroing in on the high country problem
In which, after two months chasing High Country Ministers and their officials round in a circle, I realise they’re telling me something after all
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