august 2025

LOCAL

1) Media articles written by CKM members since the last newsletter. 

07/06/25 - On the highway to climate hell.

“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” So said UN Secretary General António Guterres at the opening of the 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) in 2022. Although he was lamenting the lack of global action to abate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, there is a very real climate consequence to actual feet on accelerators.
This is why the planned increases in highway speed limits in Marlborough, recently dictated by central government, are regrettable not just for the obvious impact on road safety; they will also increase GHG emissions. Transport accounts for about a third of New Zealand’s long-lived GHG emissions and the sad fact is, the faster we drive, the greater our fuel consumption and the greater these emissions. Higher speed limits mean our nation’s transport emissions to rise further still."

05/07/25 - The sea is rising.

Most of us have the image in our heads of what sea level rise looks like. We think of pictures of beach side parking lots covered in ankle deep water. While higher high tides are certainly something we can expect as sea level rises, it is not the only thing that will happen. Sea level rise, due to our warming climate, will create a number of changes to coastal environments.

First, a little background. Globally, sea level is currently rising at about half a centimetre per year – more along some coasts due to land subsidence and ocean currents and less in others, due to tectonic uplift of land and those same ocean currents. As a consequence of global warming, sea level has risen about 25cm since 1880.
Unfortunately for us, the rate of sea level rise is accelerating, i.e., getting faster as our planet heats up, glaciers melt and warmer sea water expands. Some climate model predictions suggest as much as 1 metre by the end of the century.

02/08/25 - Will we be on our own in managed retreat?

“In principle the government won’t be able to keep bailing out people in this way.” This is a quote from Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon regarding possible government compensation for losses incurred due to recent flooding in Tasman. With central government now in the process of formulating a framework for climate adaptation, Luxon’s statement perhaps shows the way central government is leaning on the contentious issue of managed retreat.

Managed retreat, or perhaps more descriptively, “planned relocation”, is the process of moving homes out of harm’s way from anticipated natural hazards. The “red zones” evacuated due to liquefaction during the Christchurch earthquakes are an example of this. In each of these cases so far, a combination of local and central government has compensated people for the loss of their homes.

But, Treasury has said that compensation for these losses is not sustainable long term; there are simply too many properties threatened by flood and sea level rise.
So, how do we, as a society deal with this situation in the face of mounting losses due to steadily worsening climate disasters?

29/08/25 - The Amazing Blue Machine.

The total mass of humans on Earth is around 0.4 gigatonnes. If you lump together all the biomass in the ocean larger than 10 grams then about 60% is missing. We know where it went. Humans are responsible for removing about 2.7 gigatonnes of life from the ocean. Now, if you can grasp the concept that the ocean is a machine through which life, energy and raw materials flow then you can get a glimpse of the implications of our actions. Once that life is out of the ocean it is unavailable to bigger predators or smaller scavengers and can’t be digested by marine microbes in the depths. All that life has been lost to the energy flows of the ocean. Humans, not being content with removing 60% of the larger lifeforms, are now starting to commercially harvest zooplankton, one of the critical foundations of the ocean ecosystem. This does not seem like a wise action to take.

Here are links to copies of the articles if you can't access them on The Press website. On the Highway to Climate Hell, The Sea is Rising, Will we be on our own in managed retreat? and The Amazing Blue Machine. 

2) MDC submissions on the updating of the Resource Management Act national direction - 

I attended the MDC Environment and Planning Committee meeting on August 28th. There was one report of particular interest where Sarah Pearson reported on the Council’s submissions on updating Resource Management Act (RMA) national direction for Packages 1 & 2 - Infrastructure and Development, and Primary Sector and Package 3 - Freshwater. Sarah and a range of other Council staff have worked on the submissions to Central Government. I was impressed by the analysis, thought, effort and commitment shown by those staff in putting together the submissions. The report is complex and covers a lot of matters. If you are interested you can access full copies of the agenda with reports, submissions and the comprehensive Information Package on the MDC website. 

Below are a few words from the Executive Summary of the report. 

New and amended national direction are part of the Government’s active programme of resource management reform. Government publicly released for consultation three packages of proposals on national direction on 29 May 2025, with the submission period closing on 27 July 2025. These packages proposed the introduction of four new national direction instruments and amendments to 12 existing national direction instruments. Two Council endorsed submissions were made, these were focused on parts of the proposals that had relevance in the Marlborough context.

One particular National Policy Statement that Council submitted on that is of interest to CKM is Natural Hazards (NPS-NH). 

Here is a summary of the main points. 

    • As a first step towards more comprehensive national direction in the future, Council supported the need for the NPS-NH. However, the narrow scope of the proposal, primarily focusing on consenting matters (subdivision and land use), was of a concern to Council through potentially limiting its effectiveness in addressing long-term resilience and adaptation.
      
    • The exclusion of infrastructure from the NPS-NH was also a Council concern. Significant time, costs and resources are required for new infrastructure which should warrant the inclusion of infrastructure within this instrument. More generally, the proposed NPS-NH lacked alignment with the precautionary principle embedded in the current RMA which is seen as critical for managing uncertainty in hazard risk.
      
    • Regarding the proposed standard risk assessment, Council suggested further clarity was required in respect to the risk matrix including national guidance on thresholds, mitigation standards and climate scenarios. To ensure consistency and legal robustness Council recommended the proposed risk assessment process be embedded in legislation.
      
    • Council also highlighted that while the proposal allows councils to manage risk proportionally, many councils, including Marlborough, currently face gaps in hazard data and have not undertaken formal risk assessments at regional, local, or site-specific levels. The proposal also didn’t provide clear timeframes or resourcing commitments to support implementation, placing unrealistic burden on councils to deliver new obligations. 
      
    • Clarity was requested by Council on the definition of terms such as “new development” and “best available information”. 
      
    • Regarding implementation of the NPS-NH, Council requested this be delayed at least until other national direction instruments were finalised, but preferably until Phase 3 of RMA reforms were stood up to ensure alignment and integration. Notwithstanding timing, Council requested clear implementation timeframes as well as funding and technical support be available to councils. 

3) Environmental Compliance and Monitoring page launched on MDC.

A useful new resource is now available to access on the MDC website. 

"The Environmental Compliance and Monitoring site officially launched on 3 April 2025. This platform is designed to facilitate better engagement with the Marlborough community while offering a comprehensive hub for information and resources related to environmental compliance and monitoring. The site serves as a critical tool for enhancing the dissemination of information, fostering community engagement and supporting interactions between the public and Council staff."

4) Earth+ Resilience and Emissions Reduction workshop.

This workshop is scheduled for September 17th in Blenheim. Below is some information about the event. 

The Terra Nova Foundation is a socio-environmental charity, working with individuals, communities and decision-makers to align human behaviour with environmental wellbeing, through collective action and positive human connection. In partnership with the Rātā Foundation, we have been running the Earth+ Resilience and Emissions Reduction Programme since early 2024, supporting over 100 participants from not-for-profit organisations across Canterbury, Tasman and Marlborough, to develop resilience and change readiness plans, to deepen understanding of climate change and our role as kaitiaki, and to build action plans to reduce our environmental footprint and give back to our planet.
 
You can find more information and register for the event on the Terra Nova website.

5) Marlborough council holds too many secret meetings, Ombudsman says.

The Chief Ombudsman has reprimanded Marlborough District Council's use of public-excluded briefings and workshops, saying they should be "open by default". Two years ago, councils were given a dressing-down for holding workshops behind closed doors too often and for invalid reasons, but Marlborough's council boss maintains they are well within the law and it's important to discuss complex information without scrutiny. Chief Ombudsman John Allen made his critiques in his official opinion on the council's compliance with the Local Government Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA), which was presented to councillors on 4 August.

All councillor briefings and workshops, which were held to inform councillors about complex regional issues, were automatically public-excluded. Allen said the council had "acted unreasonably" in their lack of record-keeping, and he believed all workshops and briefings should be open to the public by default. "We understand that there may be occasion to partially or fully close specific briefings and workshops."

Check out the full article on the RNZ website.

NATIONAL 

6) No future climate adaptation assistance would leave NZers 'on their own'.

This item has more information related to the topic of Tom's, August Marlborough Express article from above. This is a critical topic and one that I believe New Zealanders need to think very carefully about. I'm not surprised by the direction the current government is taking but unfortunately I think it is a simplistic approach that doesn't address some of the real issues in our society. As climate impacts increase we need to find better ways to work together as a community to help each other . Leaving people to try and manage on their own and blaming them for being in the wrong place fails to recognise that the poorest in our society will be the ones most impacted. Some people may live in high risk locations who have plenty of warning and could have moved but I suspect many will live there because they can't afford the low risk locations and a vulnerable home is better than no home at all. 

An independent reference group set up by the Ministry for the Environment recently released a suite of recommendations to help the government shape climate adaptation legislation. Following a 20-year transition period, homeowners whose houses are flooded or damaged by weather events should not expect buy-outs, the group recommended. The group also recommended that funding for adaptation measures such as flood schemes, sea walls and blue-green infrastructure, should follow a 'beneficiary pays' approach in most cases.

Victoria University emeritus professor Jonathan Boston, who was part of a previous expert working group on climate adaptation, said the message from the latest report to New Zealanders was clear: "You are on your own." The report rightly recognised the need for urgent action on climate adaptation, and to make consistent, reliable information about climate hazards available, Boston said. However, the recommendations to withdraw financial assistance for both property buy-outs and adaptation measures, and to leave decision-making up to individuals, were "fundamentally flawed". "One of the core responsibilities of any government is to protect its citizens and to deal with natural disasters and so on. That is above almost anything else." To put an end-date on that was "morally bankrupt and highly undesirable", he said. The report wrongly assumed that people would act rationally if they were properly informed of the risks, he said. "We know from vast amounts of literature that people suffer from all kinds of cognitive biases... and that these have a profound influence on whether people make sensible decisions or not. "And quite apart from cognitive bias, lots of people lack choices. They lack the [financial] resources to make good decisions."released a suite of recommendations to help the government shape climate adaptation legislation.

Environmental Defense Society policy director Raewyn Peart said the report seemed to be moving away from the concept of "managed retreat", where communities moved out of harm's way in a coordinated fashion. "The approach seems to be unmanaged retreat, where we'll give people information and a transition period - they're on notice - and at that point, people can make their own decisions about whether to move or not." That would be unworkable, Peart said. "Some people will move, some won't, councils [will have] to provide services to a community that's gradually emptying out, people there who can't afford to move will be trapped into a risky situation - they may be facing regular floods of their properties. "I just don't think it's in the best interests of the country to essentially leave it to the market and people's individual decisions."

You can check out the full article on the RNZ website.

Here is more on this topic published in The Conversation.

Our imagined future scenario can be avoided if governments take a broader view of adaptation. Treating climate risk as an individual responsibility may reduce short-term government liability. But it will not reduce long-term social and fiscal liability. The risk of failing to act systemically is that the country pays in other ways – in fractured communities, rising inequity and preventable harm. Adaptation to climate change has to be about more than limiting the upfront costs of buyouts or infrastructure repairs. Ignoring the wider impacts will only shift the burden and increase it over time. Real economic and community resilience means planning with people in mind, investing early and making sure no one is left behind. That work must begin now.

Newsroom also published an article written by Jonathon Boston which has some interesting discussion in the comments section. 

7) Wetland restoration is seen as sunk cost – but new research shows why it should be considered an investment.

This article written by Wei Yang a Senior Scientist in Environmental Economics at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University is a good analysis of the benefits of seeing wetlands as an investment. It highlights again, the need to have a long view on the climate challenges facing humanity and to avoid the temptation to always go for the short term gain at the expense of the future. 

As part of a major reform of the Resource Management Act, the government is reviewing the environmental rules governing the work of local and regional councils, including policies on freshwater. The law review and freshwater policy consultations present both opportunities and challenges for wetland valuation. 

The amendment to the Resource Management Act regarding freshwater proposes:

   "quick, targeted changes which will reduce the regulatory burden on key sectors, including farming, mining and other primary industries."

While this may reduce the regulatory burden, it highlight the need for robust valuation tools that can weigh long-term benefits against immediate development returns. With sea-level rise accelerating and extreme weather becoming more frequent, wetlands represent critical infrastructure for climate adaptation. Unlike built infrastructure (stop banks, for example) that depreciates, wetlands appreciate, becoming more valuable as they mature.

The current policy consultation period offers an opportunity to embed this thinking into New Zealand’s environmental frameworks. Rather than viewing wetlands as regulatory constraints, dynamic valuation could reveal them as appreciating assets that increase resilience for coastal communities. Restoring coastal wetlands is not just about repairing nature. It’s about investing in a living, compounding asset that ameliorates climate impacts and protects our coasts and communities.

8) Native forests sink more carbon than expected. 

A NIWA-led study has found New Zealand’s native forests are absorbing more carbon dioxide (CO2) than previously thought. Study leader, NIWA atmospheric scientist Dr Beata Bukosa, says the findings could have implications for New Zealand’s greenhouse gas reporting, carbon credit costs, and climate and land-use policies.  She says forests – both native and exotic – play a vital role in absorbing CO2 through photosynthesis, but previous studies may have underestimated the amount of carbon taken up by New Zealand’s mature indigenous forests, which were thought to be roughly carbon neutral.  

Using advanced modelling and NIWA’s supercomputer, the researchers examined a decade of atmospheric data, from 2011 to 2020, to better estimate the amount of CO₂ absorbed by New Zealand's land ecosystems. The NIWA team worked with collaborators at GNS Science and Manaaki Whenua as well as other New Zealand and overseas universities and institutes. 

You can read more about it on the NIWA website.
 
9) Climate Change Commission 2025 Monitoring Report summary.

You can read the report or download a one page summary from the Climate Commission website. I found the graph in the one page summary showing the overall risk to meeting the next two emissions budget very interesting. The third emissions budget for the period 2031 - 2035 shows a large proportion in the category "significant risk to delivery" and a smaller proportion even above that risk level rated as "gap in emissions plan".  

10) Think like a Forest. 

On August 15th at the Beehive, Pure Advantage premiered their new climate action film, Think Like A Forest as a part of their "Recloaking Papatūānuku" initiative. 

They say: It was extraordinary presenting Think Like A Forest at the Beehive for many reasons, not least because this is where decisions are made, trajectories altered. And to create the conditions for Recloaking Papatūānuku to become a reality, we need levers pulled at the government level. So, alongside the film, we also presented a Policy Brief document, which we’re delighted to share with you. It outlines the issues we face, presents Recloaking Papatūānuku as a cornerstone for a new, more meaningful climate action approach, and highlights the core opportunities for policy change. For those unfamiliar with our kaupapa, Recloaking Papatūānuku is an ambitious environmental restoration proposition aimed at restoring our indigenous forests and wetlands at scale. It’s an initiative which envisages a strategic policy shift from Aotearoa New Zealand's current singular focus on short-term carbon offsetting, which fails to deliver integrated solutions and co-benefits across climate mitigation and adaptation, landscape resilience, and biodiversity. 

Here is a summary of the four key opportunities they are calling for from the Government: 

1. Create a national climate and landscape infrastructure resilience plan.

2. Transparently account for climate liabilities. 

3. Reform the Environment Trading Scheme (ETS). 

4. Scale investment by redirecting ETS revenue.

If you're interested you can download a full copy of their Policy Brief document from their website.

11) MethaneSat down: how New Zealand space ambitions fell off the radar.

Satellite built to track emissions fails just as New Zealand scientists about to take control and reap returns of NZ$29m government investment.

For scientist Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher, the news that a methane-tracking satellite was lost in space last week left her feeling like the air had been sucked from her lungs. It happened just days before New Zealand was due to take control of the spacecraft, known as MethaneSat, which was designed to “name and shame” the worst methane polluters in the oil and gas industry.
The satellite’s primary goal was to detect methane leaks from oil and gas production worldwide. But in New Zealand, Mikaloff-Fletcher leads a complementary project to explore if the satellite could also track the release of the potent greenhouse gas from agriculture. Methane from livestock accounts for almost half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions.

You can check out the full article in The Conversation. We are learning some amazing new information from satellites designed to monitor and measure environmental changes. Losing the MethaneSat is disappointing to say the least! 

12) Opinion: Recrafting the narrative of mining in New Zealand: Is Shane Jones a closet post-structuralist?

Have you heard the term "post-structuralist"? I hadn't till I read this article published on the Massey University website.  

Essentially post-structuralists argue that the way we see and know the world is socially created – and it is socially created through words, narratives and the meanings that sit behind them. We each make the world through the way we talk about it...and hence each of us, and each of the societies and the cultures we are part of, will see the world differently through the different ways we express ourselves and the knowledges we have. What is important for post-structuralists is the way in which some people (those with power) are able to shape these meanings and social ‘realities’ in ways that suit their values, ethics and interests over those of others. So, how does this gel with the blunt, belligerent rhetorical style of Shane Jones? Words shape and make the world – quite literally – and as a consummate politician and orator, Jones know this. Since coming into Government he has been persisting in shaping a new narrative about the nation and the place of mining. Guided by a neo-liberal logic (although Jones appears far more pragmatic than his coalition partner ideologues), beliefs, ethics and values, he is creating new meanings and narratives about mining and the future of the country. And through this have flowed policy change to facilitate access to the country’s mineral resources for – mostly – foreign investors. He is not talking about an objective ‘truth’, but rather how he wants the world to be.
 
13) More Climate Litigation. This time a challenge to the Emissions Reduction Plan. 

I feel a little more optimistic when I read about actions through the courts that challenge whether the government is doing enough to meet it's responsibilities on our behalf. The citizens of NZ expect our government to be proactive and fair when delivering an Emissions Reduction Plan. In this particular case it is Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) and Lawyers for Climate Action NZ (LCANZI) v Minister of Climate Change. We should be thankful we have committed and principled lawyers such as those in these two groups that are motivated to take action where they identify "glaring holes" in the Government's climate plan. 

Below is an extract from the article on the ELI website where you can also access more information about the details of the case and the relief being sought. Suffice it to say ELI and LCANZI lawyers are claiming that the Government's actions are unlawful and "that the plan’s reliance on offsetting, which treats forestry offsets as equivalent to actual emissions reductions at source, is based on a fundamental error of fact, and the Minister failed to have regard to the potential for that assumption to result in an emissions reduction plan that is inconsistent with New Zealand’s obligations under international law."  

Here is the extract - 

With our friends, Lawyers for Climate Action NZ, we are taking legal action against the Minister of Climate Change over ‘glaring holes’ in the Government’s climate plan. We believe in fairness and the rule of law. As a nation, we have high carbon emissions per capita. As a wealthy country, we need to meet our climate targets with real action, as part of the global effort to limit warming to no more than 1.5C this century.

Yet, in its first eight months, the Luxon-led Government cancelled 35 climate policies and actions which were part of the first Emissions Reduction Plan - without first consulting the public, as required by law. It then developed the second emissions reduction plan which is almost devoid of actions or policies that will reduce emissions at their source. Climate Change Minister Simon Watts instead relied heavily on offsetting the country’s emissions with forestry plantations. 

This was despite warnings from the Climate Change Commission that tree planting is no substitute for reducing emissions at source. It locks-in vast pine plantations for future generations, and falls short of our obligations under the Paris Agreement.  The science is clear that forestry is important, but it’s not a substitute for reducing our combustion of fossil fuels. The Minister has made the pathway for achieving the third emissions budget incredibly difficult. Left unchallenged, it will be a huge burden for the future.
 
You can also read more about the case in two further articles. One was published in Newsroom and focuses on the fact that "More than 80 percent of the CO2 reductions in the Government’s new climate plan come from planting trees, not reducing emissions at their source."

The other is in the Guardian.

14) Now that we've reached 1.5C, what next? 

"Our Climate Declaration" organised a webinar on August 27th where David Spratt, who is the Research Director for the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration in Australia discussed his most recent report.

He has "concluded that global warming has reached 1.5°C, the rate of warming is accelerating, and emissions reductions are unlikely to reduce the rate of warming in the near term. While much of the climate community remains committed to the 1.5°C Paris goal, this target is fundamentally flawed: it does not represent a safe boundary, will not prevent large-scale Earth system elements passing tipping points, nor does it mark a point of system stability. Exploring the limits of current strategies, the discussion set out an alternative: a three-lever approach combining zero emissions, large-scale carbon drawdown, and urgent research into safe short-term cooling."

You can watch the full webinar on their website if you're interested. 

The Breakthrough Centre has also released a new publication titled "Collision Course", which provides more detail about the matters discussed in the above webinar. You can download a copy from their website.

15) Dr Ratu Mataira on entrepreneurship and the potential of nuclear fusion.

This recent interview on Nine to Noon on RNZ caught my eye and ear. It's a fascinating insight into a New Zealander who is doing some ground breaking research into Nuclear Fusion. Yes, I know about the old chestnut that nuclear fusion is always about 10 years away but putting that aside it's worth listening to Ratu, just to get a feel for who he is and how he got to where he is now. Building a nuclear fusion plant in Ngaranga Gorge! 

The summary on the RNZ website says - 

The efforts of physicist Ratu Mataira to deliver almost limit less energy through nuclear fusion have been recognised by Victoria University in Wellington in its Distinguished Alumni awards for the brightest and boldest innovators. Dr Mataira, Ngāti Porou and Ngāti Kahungunu, completed his PhD in Applied Superconductivity at the Victoria's Robinson Research Institute at bit over three years ago.

He leads OpenStar Technologies a Wellington-based start-up working with nuclear fusion - as opposed to nuclear fission - in an attempt to capture a source of almost limitless clean energy. Multi-national groups have been trying to achieve this same goal for decades, but with massive teams and enormous budgets. 

For anyone who wishes to learn more about nuclear fusion and the different research projects currently happening this fact sheet published on the Clean Energy Wire website provides a comprehensive overview, which I found balanced and helpful.

INTERNATIONAL

15) Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects.

Many of you will have read or heard about the growing crisis for the global insect population and the consequences for the biosphere, as we lose large numbers of them. This article from the Guardian shares the alarming information that populations of insects in what appear to be relatively pristine ecosystems are not immune to this declining trend. 

Last month, the journal BioScience published new research examining how the five biggest drivers of biodiversity loss were affecting the US’s endangered creatures. For the first time – albeit by a very slim margin – the climate crisis emerged in front, driving the decline of 91% of imperiled species. Heat-driven declines could have repercussions far beyond their immediate surroundings. In the past, even if pesticides wiped out insects over an agricultural region, as long as healthy populations remained elsewhere, species could return if the spraying stopped.
“Climate change is impacting all those different little spots at the same time. It doesn’t just affect one particular spot that gets a pesticide dose or gets a tree cut down,” Janzen says. “If the insect population collapses and it happens everywhere, you don’t have a residual population.”

Today, as well as being an ecologist Wagner feels he has taken on a second role – as an elegist for disappearing forms of life. “I’m an optimist, in the sense that I think we will build a sustainable future,” Wagner says. “But it’s going to take 30 or 40 years, and by then, it’s going to be too late for a lot of the creatures that I love. I want to do what I can with my last decade to chronicle the last days for many of these creatures.”

If you are interested in more information about this crisis then I recommend this very good webinar with Nate Hagens and Oliver Milman.

They discuss the alarming decline in insect populations in the past few decades and the far-reaching consequences this has for ecosystem stability, human well-being, and the overall health of the biosphere. From pollination and nutrient cycles to being the base of food webs for countless other animals, the loss of insects has cascading effects beyond what we could imagine. Oliver outlines the human activity that is driving the worst of these trends, including how accelerating global heating is amplifying these ecological pressures. How would a major collapse of insect populations immediately disrupt our everyday lives — and are we already starting to see those impacts? How do various sectors of human activity, from industrial agriculture to urban development, influence insect health? And ultimately, would supporting thriving insect populations require us to fundamentally rethink our relationship with the creatures with which we share the biosphere?

16) International Court of Justice ruling marks new era in climate accountability.

This ruling is the culmination of many years of effort initiated by a group of students from the campus of the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu. The ICJ’s advisory opinion for the first time gives the Pacific and all vulnerable communities a legal mechanism to hold states accountable and to demand the climate action that is long overdue. My heart goes out to this group of youths who decided they would make a bold plan and follow it through. Seeing their immense efforts being rewarded is wonderful.

In the opinion piece co-written By Professor Regina Scheyvens and Professor Glenn Banks and published on the Massey University website they say -

"The ICJ ruling is blunt: the multilateral climate change and environmental agreements and treaties that countries–including New Zealand–sign-up for, do contain binding obligations for states in relation to protecting the climate system from greenhouse gas emissions. From this flow state obligations to prevent significant harm to the environment by abiding by the agreements, as well as the duty to cooperate in good faith to prevent significant environmental harm. Where states do not meet these obligations, legal action and claims for repatriations and compensation can flow. There can be – indeed we can now predict that there will be - real costs associated with our non-compliance with the agreements that we sign up to."  

You can read more about this important court ruling in this Guardian article - We were heard’: the Pacific students who took their climate fight to the ICJ – and won. and in this item from the NZ Lawyers for Climate Action website. 

17) Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Preventing Destruction of Nature is a Global Legal Duty.

This parallel and related court ruling is also of great importance and together this and the ICJ rulings provide some much needed impetus to the urgent requirement for countries around the globe to be held accountable for their activities that impact the climate and the environment that we all share.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights made public its Advisory Opinion on the climate emergency and human rights on 3 July, following more than two years of deliberation. Advisory Opinion No. 32, requested by the States of Chile and Colombia in 2023, affirms that the international obligation to prevent irreversible harm to the environment and the climate constitutes a jus cogens norm — that is, a peremptory norm of international law.

In addition to emphasising the obligation of cooperation between states in environmental matters, the Advisory Opinion addresses the right to a healthy environment and the recognition of nature as a subject of rights. Although the Advisory Opinions are not binding, this marks the first time a human rights court has recognised preventing irreversible harm to nature as a legal duty no state can avoid, comparable in weight to bans on slavery or genocide. While this interpretation currently comes from the Inter-American Court, it signals a legal paradigm shift and is expected to influence jurisprudence across Latin America and support the growing global recognition of environmental protection as a cornerstone of international human rights law.

You can see more information and access the full Advisory Opinion if you wish on the StopEcocide website.

18) Recent blogs from James Hansen.

A Formula to Keep the Science Flame Burning - July 8th.

For those readers of this newsletter who appreciate the views of James Hansen on current climate issues his blog from July is of interest. In it he discusses the challenges to scientific inquiry in the US under the Trump administration and the impacts on the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).  He also continues the ongoing discussion about climate sensitivity and the global energy imbalance and whether the IPCC assessments of these are faulty. 

Why is the Trump Administration trying to kill a small space science institute in New York City? Explanation begins with Galileo’s method of scientific inquiry and ends with the role of special interest money in the United States government.

Science itself is under threat today, in a way that I thought was no longer possible. Scientists who see and understand the threat must speak out. The next 5-10 years are crucial for policy decisions to define a course that provides energy to raise global living standards, while allowing climate policies that cool the planet enough to avoid locking in irreversible effects such as shutdown of the ocean’s overturning circulation and large sea level rise. These objectives require knowledge of ongoing climate change and the drives that cause change. We scientists must stand up against the forces of ignorance, fight for the collection of data, and work with young people to help them find a path to a healthy climate that benefits all humanity.

And here is the issue humanity is doing their best to ignore. Earth's energy imbalance has doubled since 2005. This is not good!

Confirmation of our analysis is provided by precise monitoring of Earth’s energy imbalance – the difference between absorbed solar radiation and heat radiation emitted to space. Because of the change from increasing aerosols in 1970-2005 to decreasing aerosols, Earth’s energy imbalance – which is the drive for global warming – has doubled since 2005, from 0.6 to 1.2 watts per square meter averaged over Earth’s surface. The latter value is equal to the energy in 800,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day (220 per second), with 90 percent of this excess energy going into the ocean. Because of the massive size of the ocean, warming is gradual but relentless. In the absence of effective policy intervention, regional climate extremes will grow in coming decades, and there will be effects that are practically irreversible, such as rising sea level.

You can download a full copy of the blog from his website.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees - August 6th.

This blog has more very interesting information on climate sensitivity and climate forcings if you're into that sort of thing. Fascinating if you're into the science!

Climate sensitivity is substantially higher than IPCC’s best estimate (3°C for doubled CO2), a conclusion we reach with greater than 99 percent confidence. We also show that global climate forcing by aerosols became stronger (increasingly negative) during 1970-2005, unlike IPCC’s best estimate of aerosol forcing. High confidence in these conclusions is based on a broad analysis approach. IPCC’s underestimates of climate sensitivity and aerosol cooling follow from their disproportionate emphasis on global climate modeling, an approach that will not yield timely, reliable, policy advice.

James also included some relevant comments on "Communication of the climate situation". I'm interested to note regarding "communication of the climate situation" how their scientific work has been sidelined and discussion about their recent papers been shutdown on the grounds that their analysis was “too simple” and their conclusions were “outside the mainstream.” I am one person who places a lot more weight on James Hansen's scientific work than those who downplay it. You can make you own decisions about that. 

He also includes information about his input to the International Court of Justice decision covered in Item 16 of this newsletter.

You can download a full copy of the blog from his website.

The Venus Syndrome & Runaway Climate - August 27th.

James has been writing a book for sometime now called Sophie's Planet. Sophie is his granddaughter. This follows his earlier book called "Storms of my Grandchildren" published in 2009. He has posted a draft of chapter 10 of Sophie's Planet for his blog readers to see. It is on the topic of "The Venus Syndrome & Runaway Climate."  

In the chapter he says - 

The “runaway climate” threat is the danger of passing a “point of no return,” with enormous, irreversible, consequences for today’s young people and their descendants. I depicted the danger of rapid ice sheet collapse and sea level rise as a “tipping point” twenty years ago, but also as a “point of no return.” The latter terminology is now more appropriate, as Lenton et al. use “tipping point” for a broader range of amplifying climate feedbacks, many of which are reversible, if the forcings driving global warming are removed or replaced with global cooling.

The runaway climate threat and danger of passing a point of no return are taboo with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organization that we should expect to be most protective of the rights and the future of young people. This reticence of IPCC is a cause for concern, which deserves to be pointed out and vigorously debated. We have presented evidence that the millennial time scale of ice sheet changes in the models that IPCC relies on are much slower than indicated by real-world data, even when ocean and ice sheet changes are driven by very slowly changing paleoclimate forcings. Specifically, paleoclimate data, global modeling, and ongoing ocean and ice sheet observations raise concern that rapid shutdown of the ocean’s overturning circulation could occur within decades, which can affect ocean/ice sheet interactions and the rate of sea level rise.

The potential of passing the point of no return is cause for concern, but no reason to panic. The climate system’s delayed response to human-made drivers of climate change – which gives rise to the runaway climate threat – also provides time to take preventive actions, if the climate science is understood well enough to define realistic, effective, policy actions. It is incumbent on us to help define the research that is needed to better assess the threat of shutdown of ocean overturning circulation and large sea level rise because of their irreversible nature.

There is a more mundane, slowly growing climate threat, which the public is beginning to recognize. Extremes of the hydrologic cycle are amplified on a hotter planet. Where rainfall occurs, it includes more extreme rainfall, floods, and stronger storms driven by a warmer ocean, greater latent energy in water vapor, and larger temperature gradients. High temperature causes dry times and places to have more extreme heat waves, droughts and fires. Some tropical regions – and the subtropics in summer – can become so warm that the human body is unable to cool itself and survive in the outdoors. If we allow global climate to go down that path, pressures for emigration from low latitudes would dwarf the emigration pressures of today, which would likely make the planet ungovernable.

Again you can download a full copy of the blog from his website.

19) Experts: Which climate tipping point is the most concerning?

As a follow on from the previous item you may wish to read the brief opinions of 14 global experts in their fields on this topic. 
You can check it out on the Carbon Brief website.

In July, hundreds of scientists, policymakers and journalists flocked to the University of Exeter to attend an international conference on “tipping points”. The conference saw experts discussing the dangers of a range of Earth system tipping points, including the dieback of the Amazon, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). On the sidelines of the conference, Carbon Brief asked a wide range of delegates which tipping point concerns them the most. 

20) NASA study on storm cloud reduction of 1.5 to 3%/decade.

This scientific paper is from the above-mentioned GISS institute. I find obscure research papers like this fascinating, as they can give us glimpses of aspects of global heating that most of humanity are completely ignorant about. And yet the consequences are existential. We're a funny old species aren't we? We behave in ways that are destroying our life support systems and at the same time act as if there is nothing to be concerned about. We're too busy GROWING and consuming to take notice.

Here is the plain English summary of the paper - 

Analysis of satellite observations shows that in the past 24 years the Earth's storm cloud zones in the tropics and the middle latitudes have been contracting at a rate of 1.5%–3% per decade. This cloud contraction, along with cloud cover decreases at low latitudes, allows more solar radiation to reach the Earth's surface. When the contribution of all cloud changes is calculated, the storm cloud contraction is found to be the main contributor to the observed increase of the Earth's solar absorption during the 21st century.

21) Game-changing projects for Australia's clean energy industry.

Kidston Pumped Storage Hydro - This first item is on pumped storage which has been a topic for discussion in NZ over the last few years. This Australian project utilises an old gold mine pit in Northern Queensland and is a first-of-its-kind natural battery storage facility for Australia. When completed it will provide 250 MW of rapid response (30 seconds) renewable energy. It required 4 years of design development and technical optimisation and is providing 800 jobs during construction. The short video clip and summary of the project on the McConnell Dowell website provides an interesting look at the project.

Two large Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) in Australia are further examples of game changers with batteries large enough to play an important role in stabilising a power grid. The Waratah battery on the Central Coast in N.S.W. has a maximum output of 850 megawatt (MW) and storage capacity of 1680 megawatt hour (MWh with the Collie plant in WA having a maximum output of 560 megawatts (MW) and a large 2,240 MWh storage capacity.

Maybe NZ needs to be installing large scale batteries such as these instead of chasing after more gas reserves? The best NZ comparison is the Ruakākā Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) which was completed by Meridian Energy in May this year, which has a maximum output of 100MW of electricity and storage capacity of 200MWh, enough to power around 60,000 average households during winter for a two-hour period. They are also developing a new BESS in Manawatū of the same size.  

22) The world's largest sand battery just went live in Finland.

This is another very interesting item. A battery that can effectively store electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar, as heat, in a large insulated storage tank full of sand.  

Finland has inaugurated an industrial-scale sand battery this week in the southern town of Pornainen, where it'll take over heating duties from an old woodchip power plant for the municipality. It's set to reduce carbon emissions from the local heating network by as much as 70%, and is the largest one of its kind in the world.

Developed by Finnish Firm Polar Night Energy – which also built the world's first commercial sand battery a few years ago – this battery is about 42 ft (13 m) tall and 50 ft (15 m) wide. It serves as a storage medium for up to 100 MWh, with a round trip efficiency of 90%. That makes it about 10 times larger than the first-ever sand battery, and capable of storing enough heat for the whole town to use for a week.

This Thermal Energy Storage (TES) reservoir is a critical tool for places like Finland, which intermittently generate vast quantities of wind and solar electricity, but also face variations in energy demand and supply. The sand battery charges up when electricity is cheaply available and can hold a charge for months at a time, helping balance the energy grid during periods of high demand.

Check out the full article and a video about it.

23) How to run the world - We need new forms of global diplomacy to transcend the current pathetic bargaining of national and commercial interests.

This is a long read published written by David Van Reybrouck, Philosopher Laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders and published on the Aeon website.  It is for those who are interested in some of the history behind this predicament we now find ourselves in and looks at ways whereby people around the world can have improved opportunities to contribute to discussion and decision making that affects the future of all life on our Planet.

Here is an extract from the article to give you a taste - 

The reason why tools from the past won’t suffice is that the task involved has become dramatically different. The planetary polycrisis we are facing is not a regular war, nor even a world war or a global nuclear threat. We are talking about an entirely new form of complexity here, well beyond classical intrahuman conflict. The polycrisis is anthropogenic in its origin, but it cannot be anthropocentric in its solution. It has become a physical reality of its own, with its own ever-accelerating dynamics, its own centrifugal forces catapulting the more-than-human consequences away from its human causes.

And here lies the heart of the problem: the Earth system is in deep crisis, but we confront it with the usual solutions of the human world. No wonder that the existing concepts – national sovereignty, raison d’état, multilateral diplomacy, and so-called stakeholder engagement (a polite term for consultations with lobbyists) – fall so painfully short. The UN was founded to manage conflicts between countries, not to resolve the conflict between humanity and the planet. A flat organisation cannot solve a vertical problem.

How can national sovereignty remain the bedrock of international relations when we are faced with colossal planetary challenges? What can be ‘foreign’ about ‘policy’ when on the most existential of issues the world is more deeply interconnected than ever? The whole notion of ‘foreign policy’ feels increasingly meaningless in the age of planetarity. The clearcut distinction between foreign and domestic affairs comes from a time when the geophysical fiction of borders largely shaped historical societies. But extreme weather patterns, biosphere integrity, ocean acidification, sea level rise, freshwater change, mass migration, global pandemics and runaway machine intelligence laugh at the political boundaries between nation-states. This does not mean that we have to do away with borders altogether – they still structure part of our lives – only that we have to start thinking about levels of diplomacy that are not sovereignty-driven. Beyond the logic of raison d’état, we urgently need to develop the principle of raison de Terre – an encompassing approach that prioritises the interests of the Earth system above all national considerations.

Suppose such a global citizens’ assembly were to become an integral part of the COP meetings. After a pre-conference online phase, which could involve several million participants, a random sample of 1,000 of them, doing justice to the diversity and demography of the world, would participate. And suppose they were allowed to deliberate, not just in the Green Zone where visitors and activists stroll, but in the Blue Zone, the heart of the congress, where the official proceedings take place. And suppose this assembly had access to the best available science on climate change and its causes. They would also hear from national politicians, civil society organisations, private sector actors, religious leaders and Indigenous communities. At the end, they would deliver their recommendations to the leaders of the world. Would they need almost 30 years to state the obvious, namely that we have to get out of this fossil nightmare as soon as we can? Most probably not. They would take planetary custodianship to an entirely different level, well beyond the pathetic bargaining of national and industrial interests at the annual COP conference. They would show that, above bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, another level is possible: planetary diplomacy.

The question is easy: how on earth are we going to save Earth? Do we content ourselves with quietly continuing to watch the painful spectacle of the past decades, believing that this protocol is the only one possible? Or do we draw hope and inspiration from global opinion polls and fascinating experiments that show that everyday people want so much more action and can play a crucial role themselves?

24) Climate Change Kills Capitalism. 

In my humble opinion this is a must-read article from Robert Hunziker published on the "Counterpunch" website. Robert is commenting on an important article published in March this year. The article is repeating what many who read this newsletter already know but the critical thing is that it is being stated by a leader in the global insurance industry.  

Capitalism, like Antarctica and like the Amazon rainforest, is under threat of destruction by excessive levels of CO₂ emissions which cause radical climate change. Risk of some level of extinction of capitalism goes to the heart of a recent article written by Gunther Thallinger, Member of the Board of Management of Allianz Group (est. 1889, Munich) the world’s largest insurance company.

Mr. Thallinger spells out the risks: “These extreme weather phenomena drive direct physical risks to all categories of human-owned assets—land, houses, roads, power lines, railways, ports, and factories. Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time, which translates to loss of value, business interruption, and market devaluation on a systemic level.”

If this is how a board member of the world’s largest insurance company views risks to capitalism’s asset structure, then the world’s capitalist’s chieftains should seriously consider altering the destructive nature of climate change asap by omitting CO₂ emissions. Thallinger explains the risks to capitalism’s markets: “The insurance industry has historically managed these risks. But we are fast approaching temperature levels 1.5˚C, 2˚C, 3˚C where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many of these risks. The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

Accordingly, “This is not a one-off market adjustment. This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze.” Thallinger goes on to explain how excessive climate change damages capitalism to “climate-driven market failure.” Nothing could be a weirder coincidence than capitalism self-destroying via the genesis of industrialization powered by oil.

Solutions to climate change are difficult beyond halting fossil fuel emissions, full stop. For instance, state support where insurance fails to cover damage is not a realistic option as multiple climate-related disasters strain public budgets beyond acceptance by taxpayers. Consequently, multiple climate disasters ultimately lead to either governmental austerity or collapse. There is no in-between and neither option is satisfactory for a vibrant capitalistic economy. As for adaptation to climate change, Thallinger does not see any easy ways out, claiming “the false comfort of adaptation” as one more downside to the global warming complexity. “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance.” And adaptation, by definition, is limited with mega fires and cities built on flood plains. There are no easy answers.

And this article by Nick Feik published on the Aussie "Crikey" website looks at the implications in the Australian context. 

25) ‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse.

This is an interesting analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation, which argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished. I liked the authors positive statement about our predicament when he says - “Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we’re built for.”

Here is an extract from the article in the Guardian by Australian Damian Carrington. 

“The three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator. Our corporations and, increasingly, our algorithms, also resemble these kinds of people,” he says. “They’re basically amplifying the worst of us.”

Kemp points to these “agents of doom” as the source of the current trajectory towards societal collapse. “These are the large, psychopathic corporations and groups which produce global catastrophic risk,” he says. “Nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, are only produced by a very small number of secretive, highly wealthy, powerful groups, like the military-industrial complex, big tech and the fossil fuel industry.

“The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.”

If citizens’ juries and wealth caps seem wildly optimistic, Kemp says we have been long brainwashed by rulers justifying their dominance, from the self-declared god-pharaohs of Egypt and priests claiming to control the weather to autocrats claiming to defend people from foreign threats and tech titans selling us their techno-utopias. “It’s always been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Goliaths. That’s because these are stories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years,” he says.

26) The National Security Risks We’re Not Prepared For: Adapting In an Age of Actorless Threats.

This item is a one hour YouTube discussion between Nate Hagens and Rod Schoonover. I recommend it for those who are interested in the bigger picture issues arising from the current global environmental and geopolitical developments. 

National security concerns have been the invisible hand guiding governance throughout recorded history. In the 20th century, it was defined by a country versus country dynamic: whichever nation was the strongest and most strategic was also the safest. But today, our biggest national security threats don’t come from opposing nations – they are “actorless threats” that emerge from the breakdown of the complex systems we all depend on – from the stability of our planetary systems to our intricately complex and fragile global supply chains. In this unprecedented landscape, what is required of us in order to keep our citizens safe? In this episode, Nate is joined by Rod Schoonover, an expert at the intersection of Earth systems stress and national security, where they discuss the need for the evolution of national defense to address the systemic (and diffuse) threats of the 21st century. Rod emphasizes the need for a reformed security sector that addresses contemporary challenges, like global heating that leads to extreme climatic events, urging immediate action to mitigate risks and enhance stability. Importantly, they also delve into the need for political leadership to embrace complexity and local resilience when tackling these pressing issues. How do we unite against ‘actorless’ threats, even when we don’t have someone to blame for their damages? Where have leadership and governance already begun to adapt to address these existential concerns, and where are we seeing failures? Finally, how could incorporating more cooperative principles at every level of society transform our ability to bend – not break – under the weight of our human predicament?