INTRODUCTION -

I have thought long and hard about this newsletter, about what I should include and exclude. Everything is a value judgement formed by our view of the world and my perspective is no more valid than anybody else's. Each three months between newsletters I keep a record of different items that I come across or that get sent to me by others and then I have to choose what to include in the newsletter that might be of value to those who read it. At this point in time I'm acutely aware of the growing disruption, conflict and polarisation happening around our planet. It appears to be quickening and feels like a boil coming to a head ready to burst. With Donald Trump and his entourage of loyal courtiers openly and defiantly abandoning any semblance of efforts to address the impacts of the growing environmental polycrisis, and with shifting geopolitical alliances in many parts of the globe it seems that we are becoming more and more preoccupied with building empires and power rather than focusing on more important matters. There are many who know and understand that the maintenance and saving of our planetary life support systems must be our first priority but so often those people don't hold the power to effect the necessary changes. So, in a perverse way I see people like Donald playing a critical role in this struggle for survival. If the boil has to come to a head and burst before we truly face the magnitude of the predicament we need to confront urgently, not sometime in the near future, then so be it. Who am I to question how this drama will play out?

Some CKM members have read and discussed a book written by Dougald Hine called "At Work in the Ruins" in which Dougald challenges the readers to face up to the reality of the existential emergency glaring us in the face. We have exceeded six out of nine identified planetary limits. We may not want to face this reality but there are indeed Limits to Growth and for those who wish to see, the proof is evident all over our living planet. I believe we no longer have time to fix the economy first or improve our standard of living first.

Dougald says -

"...we don’t get to choose whether or not there is an ending. We only get to choose what kind of ending we have, and therefore what we have left to build from."

You can find in item 17 below a quote from a recent discussion between Dougald and Nate Hagens and the YouTube link, if you wish to listen to the full discussion.  

Item 13 is about a report from "risk managements experts" and therefore is from a totally different perspective to Dougald Hine but a quote from the article gives a very similar warning. "[They] do not recognise there is a risk of ruin. They are precisely wrong, rather than being roughly right.”

In Item 15 George Monbiot expresses some of my thoughts better than I can so I recommend checking out that item.

Budyong.

LOCAL

1) Media articles written by CKM members since the last newsletter. 
 
07/12/2024 - Climate change: Expect to get angry.

"We are going to need to be strong and united in order to deal a world of ever worsening weather, and its economic and geopolitical consequences. As history teaches us, divisiveness and destitution often lead to conflict and conflict can lead to failed government and societal breakdown. For many around the world, their way of life is already threatened, leading to migration and conflict, ripping the social fabric of communities.

So, before we get angry, let’s think about how best we, as a community and a country, can prepare for the disasters yet to come. What would we do if we were hit by flooding, like hit Auckland, Hawke’s Bay and Tairawhiti during Cyclone Gabrielle? What about a wildfire, like the 2000 Wither Hills Boxing Day fire? Are we ready?

Rather than get angry, we need to get prepared."

01/02/2025 - Are we smarter than yeast?

"Some might say we have an advantage over yeast in that we can think (the “sapiens” part of Homo sapiens). Whereas yeast will blindly consume available sugar until their waste poisons themselves, we can see what’s coming and change course. We’ve done it before, banning pesticides like DDT and ozone-eating CFCs in refrigerants, and cleaning up acid rain. Humanity, working together, across borders, has fixed a number of environmental problems. We can do it again. Even though yeast regularly poison themselves in their own waste, they have one advantage over us.

When their home gets too toxic to live in, their offspring can blow in the wind to the next piece of rotting fruit. For us, there is no Planet B. We need to address these environmental crises head on and the sooner the better. The future of humanity depends upon it."

28/02/25 - Is growth, growth, growth really the way to go?

"It is common for people to think of the climate and environmental crises as being problems to be solved. Unfortunately it is not that simple. The situation is better thought of as a predicament. A predicament does not have clear answers or ways to be resolved. This is the quandary we find ourselves in now. Do we want to face the reality of our predicament? Can we choose to discourage tourism and helicopter flights to view the vineyards, or the multitude of other high emissions discretionary activities we can manage without? Can we have an informed debate about what an ecologically and socially sustainable future might look like? If this is too big a step to take then we will be left with the consequences of our collective actions and unfortunately that means increasing extreme weather events, environmental breakdown and damage to our social fabric."

2) CKM submission on Treaty Principles Bill.

Thanks goes to Don Quick and others for their efforts in putting together our submission. Below are a couple of extracts from it. You can download a copy of the full submission if interested.

"CKM submits that the Treaty Principles Bill be withdrawn and scrapped at the earliest opportunity.
Our reasons for so submitting are multifold. We are in unanimous agreement that in itself and in the context of the many changes proposed by the current Coalition Government the Bill will contribute adversely to the changes that are essential for Aotearoa New Zealand, both as a land and as a society as we know it, to adapt to the overheating of our planet.
For the present and Immediate future effects of climate change to mitigate and perhaps reverse, it will take much more and much longer than our present and immediate future technology will manage. We cannot keep going as we are or as the present government proposes.
CKM opposes the Bill in its entirety from legal, social, environmental and climate justice viewpoints and in recognition of the need for a cohesive and resilient society the better to face the challenges of climate adaptation ahead."

AND - "Climate Karanga Marlborough vigorously opposes the Treaty Principles Bill, including the stance adopted by the leader of the National Party. We see his stance as one of political expediency, not wanting to upset his coalition partners, placing more importance on a temporary political coalition agreement than on the Waitangi agreement at the foundation of our nation.
Historically, Westminster-style governments have treated te Tiriti o Waitangi expediently, ducking the issue whether the land and waters belong to us or we belong to the Land and Water. Climate breakdown is adding urgency to the matter of our belonging."

3) Climate Action Week.

Climate Action Week organised by Climate Action Marlborough this year was from February 24 - 28. The focus for the week was "Resilience in Action: Building Regenerative Communities through Climate Innovation and Nature-Based Solutions." Catherine van der Muelen and her team at Climate Action Marlborough organised a wide range of speakers and immersion experiences for the participants with the topics for the five days being -

• FINANCING OUR TRANSITION TO A CLIMATE POSITIVE ECONOMY, 
• RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR IMPACT, 
• NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS,
• CIRCULARITY, 
• CLIMATE POSITIVE FUTURES: the BIG shifts we need to take to take action.  

The International Keynote Speaker was Jonathan Foley, sustainability scientist and Executive Director of Project Drawdown. His topic was Global food production — from meat to grains. Food production accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. He presented a portfolio of data-backed solutions to build a better food system world-wide, starting with four key steps to cut emissions.

Tom attended 4 of the 5 days and has very helpfully put together a summary of the week for us.

Catherine also worked with the local Marlborough Express again this year who dedicated a whole edition to Climate Action Week with 14 different Opinion pieces published on the topic of resilience.

4) NDC2 announced.

The announcement at the end of January of the government's second Nationally Determined Contribution was pretty underwhelming. This statement is from the Ministry for Environment website.

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are at the heart of the Paris Agreement. NDCs are how countries contribute to the global temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, to hold the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.

The Ministry for the Environment sought feedback to inform the Government’s decision on its international climate change target (second Nationally Determined Contribution, or NDC2) for 2031–35. The Government announced NDC2 in January 2025.

New Zealand's NDC2:

•     Aims to reduce emissions by 51 to 55 per cent compared to 2005 levels by 2035
•     Covers 2031 to 2035,  the same period as our third domestic emissions budget
•     Is a progression on NDC1.

This brief analysis from Lawyers for Climate Action NZ gives a stark appraisal of the complete lack of ambition from our current government. They conclude by saying - "The climate does not care about our clever accounting choices, it cares about actual emissions reductions. And our failure to walk the talk will be apparent to our trading partners, some of whom are already adopting much more ambitious targets."

Tom put in a submission on behalf of Coal Action Network Aotearoa, which you can check out if interested.

5) Restoring the Marlborough Sounds: An Ocean Reform Case Study.

A presentation was given to the MDC Environment and Planning Committee on January 30th by Raewyn Peart from the Environmental Defence Society (EDS). She provided a summary of their report entitled ‘Restoring the Marlborough Sounds: An Ocean Reform Case Study’ that they completed late last year.

“In 2021, the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) embarked on a project to explore options for reform of Aotearoa New Zealand’s oceans  management system. Phase 1 was completed in May 2022 and examined the current system, identified problems with it, and developed  options for reform. EDS is currently undertaking Phase 2 of the project which is focused on developing concrete recommendations for oceans  reform. As part of that work, the Society is undertaking a series of case studies. This report sets out the findings of the Marlborough Sounds case study which is based on an extensive literature review and discussions with 40 people with associations with the area.”

You realise just how important this very thorough and detailed report (100 pages) is once you hear and see what is covered in it. It does leave  me feeling thankful once again to NGO’s like EDS who do such important work advocating for Te Taiao. It seems that the really critical  investigation and analysis required for such a comprehensive report, which government departments should really be doing, has to be  undertaken by NGO’s. The plus side of that is NGO’s usually have their priorities more aligned with those of CKM and place high value on  the needs of the environment and nature. At the beginning of Raewyn’s presentation she summed up the urgency of the situation with this statement - “there is a small and shrinking opportunity to halt decline and build resilience...”.  Where have we heard that before I wonder?

Here is the summary from the report, which makes very clear what the challenges are, if the health of the Sounds ecosystem is to be improved.

“The Marlborough Sounds is an iconic and unique marine system, which has a long and fascinating history of Māori and European  occupation, and is suffering severe and ongoing degradation. Key stressors are high levels of sedimentation, damage to seabed habitats from bottom trawling and dredging, over-harvesting of fish stocks and climate change. Reversing this long-term degradation will require a concerted and integrated effort which includes passive marine restoration, active marine restoration and land-based efforts. All users of the Sounds will need to play their part, in a combined effort, if the current situation is to be turned around. This report seeks to identify some ways in which this might be achieved.”

Listening to the report brought home the reality that without some big changes to management of the land and the ocean environment we are headed towards the likelihood of complete collapse of the marine ecosystem in the Sounds. Raewyn made the point that building back from its very fragile current state is at least a better option than trying to restore an ecosystem that has collapsed. Current natural beds of green lipped mussels are about 3% of their historic coverage and the severely depleted pilchard population is an example of the long term damage the  Sounds have sustained. In the early 1940s, there were enough fish to supply a pilchard cannery in Picton, but catches dropped quickly from almost 300 tonnes in 1942 to 11 tonnes in 1949 and the cannery closed. Pilchards play a critical role in the marine ecosystem being one of the main links between plankton and fish higher up the foodchain. Raewyn made the very salient point that managing fisheries as single stock units completely fails to address the cumulative stressors on the marine environment in general and particularly in the Sounds. I was interested to hear from her that MDC is seen as a leader in Aotearoa with its active support for research to learn more about the issues facing the Sounds and what solutions there might be. The Council’s policy of making the results of research that they have contributed to open source, is sensible and wise. I understand the EDS work on NZ’s oceans management system was jointly funded by MfE and some philanthropic money. She emphasised how essential a good plan is if trying to attract philanthropic funds. A regional “State of the Sounds” report driven by Council would be an important part of getting consensus from all Sounds users, commercial and recreational, and that this consensus would be a critical component of getting political buy in, to make the major management decisions required to achieve sustainable improvement. She also referred to the possibility of eventually getting a Local Act of Parliament to consolidate those changes.

Several Councillors made heartfelt statements after the presentation and the committee chair, Gerald Hope made a plea for there to be a long term forward focus on what might be the best solutions. He noted, over the last hundred and fifty years there had been large economic rewards for NZ from the Sounds, and that now is the time to get a future focus on restoring them to their former glory. Long-term committed funding will be critical if that is to happen. Nadine stated that “at scale” restoration work is clearly required and to tackle this will require a collaborative effort from all interested parties.

For anyone interested in more detail you can download the meeting agenda and/or the full report from the Council website.

There is also a very informative article from NZ Geo in 2020 that is worth checking out if you’re interested in this topic. It’s titled “How to fix the Marlborough Sounds”.

NATIONAL

6) Climate Action Campus.

"The Climate Action Campus Ōtautahi is the first of its kind in the country. It’s designed to help students understand, know about and take action on climate change. As a children’s rights issue, the Climate Action Campus aims to support children and young people in their response to the climate crisis.

Climate change places an incredible responsibility on all of us; we are the ones who can ensure the planet remains livable for people and all other living things. For children and young people in particular there is a clear sense of urgency. They face unprecedented changes in the climate that will affect every aspect of their lives. This reality can induce a sense of hopelessness and despair, a sense that there is no future- a sense of climate anxiety or angst.

It is essential there are opportunities for children and young people to not only understand climate change, but to be part of the collective response to its impacts through participation in climate change planning, decision making and action. There is a need for children and young people along with their whānau, kaiako and wider community to be aware of possibilities and actions."

You can learn more about this innovative campus on their website.

Climate Action Campus is satellite campus of Ao Tawhiti school. If you're interested you can also listen to a brief interview between Jesse Mulligan school and director, Anita Yarwood.

7) David Seymour floats pulling out of Paris Agreement after 2026 election.

"Act leader and senior minister David Seymour has floated taking a policy of pulling New Zealand out of the Paris climate agreement to the next election, potentially making Paris withdrawal an Act election promise. Labour’s Climate Change spokeswoman Megan Woods has called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to recommit to the deal and not allow Seymour to pull New Zealand out of it. Luxon has been approached for comment.

Last week, the Government published its target for the second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) — the name given to a target under the Paris Agreement. The new NDC will commit New Zealand to reducing emissions by 51% to 55% below 2005 levels by 2035. The current NDC is for a 50% cut by 2030. The call disappointed observers on both sides. Energy and climate expert Christina Hood described the target as “shockingly unambitious” in a post to LinkedIn, while Federated Farmers meat and wool chairman Toby Williams said the new target signed New Zealand up to a decade of planting pine trees on productive farmland."

Check out the full article in the NZ Herald.

8) Methanexit – Should NZ be subsidising our largest gas user?

This is an informative analysis provided by 350 Aotearoa. It clearly explains the folly of using gas to make methanol at the Methanex plant in Taranaki.

"The Methanexit report focuses on one major player in the New Zealand energy sector, a company called Methanex New Zealand Ltd, which is the biggest user of fossil gas in New Zealand. Throughout the last decade, Methanex used between 30 per cent and 45 per cent of all gas produced in the country. Methanex uses the gas to produce methanol, a product which is used to create other chemicals, such as formaldehyde and plastics.

Methanex New Zealand Ltd has a parent company in Hong Kong and the main Methanex Corporation is headquartered in Vancouver (British Columbia). Both places receive an eye-watering amount of money from Methanex NZ each year. The New Zealand branch appears to have used complex transactions to shift $257.4 million profit offshore, reducing income tax paid to the government by more than $46 million over the last decade. All the while, it is now operating a more emissions-intensive plant in New Zealand than the rest of its portfolio, to the detriment of the climate.

To make matters worse, Methanex gets a lot of help from our government to maintain its business model in the form of subsidies. Methanex received $60 million worth of free carbon credits last year under the Emissions Trading Scheme to subsidise its pollution. These are like special coupons the government gives companies to make pollution cheaper for them. We estimate Methanex’s free carbon credits over the last decade add up to about $300 million. That’s $300 million that our New Zealand government is giving to a wealthy overseas company to continue their polluting industry and shift profit offshore- outrageous!"

You can check out the full article on the 350.org website if you want to know more.

9) All of Govt’s 2024 coal earnings spent treating damages at a single mine.

"New Treasury figures show last year the Government spent more than $3 million treating damage caused by coal mining at a single site on the West Coast – more than it collected in royalties for all coal mining nationwide the same year. The Stockton mine is the country’s largest open-cast coal operation, and a fast-track listing would see its licence continue for another 25 years. Remediation efforts for historical mining are still underway.
Despite efforts by the mine’s operators to restore the health of nearby waterways, acid mine drainage poses a lingering and considerable threat to the freshwater ecosystems. According to the company’s annual report, DNA data appears to show “spectacular recovery” in nearby waterways. But publicly collected data from the surrounding area paints a different picture."

You can check out the full Newsroom article for more info.

INTERNATIONAL

10) The Acid Test: Global Temperature in 2025.

Readers of this newsletter will know that I follow the occasional reports produced by James Hansen and his team. They are always fascinating if you're interested in the latest science and their take on it. Their analysis and conclusions are sometimes seen by others in the science community as being a little extreme but in my humble opinion I think it highly likely they are closer to the reality than many others. Their latest report released on February 23rd has the following to say.

"The unprecedented leap of global temperature in 2023 and early 2024 exceeded 0.4°C (Fig. 1). We and coauthors interpret that uniquely large warming as being due about equally to a moderate El Nino and reduction of ship aerosols, with a smaller contribution from the present solar maximum. An “acid” test of our interpretation will be provided by the 2025 global temperature: unlike the 1997-98 and 2015-16 El Ninos, which were followed by global cooling of more than 0.3°C and 0.2°C, respectively, we expect global temperature in 2025 to remain near or above the 1.5°C level. Indeed, the 2025 might even set a new record despite the present weak La Nina. There are two independent reasons. First, the “new” climate forcing due to reduction of sulfate aerosols over the ocean remains in place, and, second, high climate sensitivity (~4.5°C for doubled CO2) implies that the warming from recently added forcings is still growing significantly.
What is the importance of these high global temperatures and the acceleration of global warming? Along with growing impacts on society and ecosystems caused by increasing climate extremes, our main concern is the danger of passing the point of no return, when the warming induces shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and that, in turn, locks in sea level rise of several meters. If accelerated warming (Fig. 1) is not arrested, it will accelerate ice melt and freshwater injection onto the North Atlantic. Such increased freshwater injection, rising temperature of the ocean surface layer, and increased rainfall over the North Atlantic Ocean – all certain to occur if accelerated warming is allowed to continue – are the elements that are predicted to drive AMOC shutdown within 2-3 decades."

In their report they address the issue of climate sensitivity and how using different sensitivities has significant impacts on the conclusions reached using different climate models. They say -

"Why are we confident that climate sensitivity is high? We have shown that in three independent ways: (1) climate sensitivity 4.8°C ± 0.6°C based on comparison of glacial and interglacial climate states, (2) sensitivity of 4.5°C ± 0.5°C based on temperature from 1750 through 2024, (3) the large “darkening” (reduced albedo) of Earth between 2000 and 2024, which implies a strong cloud feedback – and strong cloud feedback implies high climate sensitivity."

If you wish to get into further detail of why James and his team are convinced climate sensitivity is higher than the IPCC uses then check out the previous two reports on their website dated February 6th and 12th, as well as this latest one dated February 20th. You can download the full pdf files from their website.

11) New Research Led by James Hansen Documents Global Warming Acceleration.

This article from "Inside Climate News" discusses their reports and also has a very good global temperature animation, which shows how the average annual global temperature increases above the pre-industrial average have increased in recent years, especially in 2023 and 2024, at the end of the video, when the annual jumps were the biggest on record.

Kevin Anderson, a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the new paper, also emphasized that it’s important to look at the science within the political context.

“Otherwise it’s just an interesting academic discussion,” he said.

“Whether we align with the more conservative forecasts of the IPCC or the more challenging warnings of Jim Hansen, the policy implications are strikingly similar,” he said. “We are rapidly blasting through the 1.5-degree Celsius commitment.”

The IPCC’s path to stay well below 2 degrees Celsius of warming requires 7 percent emissions cuts annually worldwide, starting now, he said, which would be an even bigger drop than occurred during COVID lockdowns.

“In this context, the policy process has abdicated its responsibilities, opting instead for short-term acquiescence with business as usual, rather than offering strong, transparent and cogent leadership,” Anderson said. “After decades of half-truths, delusion and outright lies from those in positions of power, and often from their advisers as well, we now find ourselves facing severe risks of disastrous outcomes.”
Much climate damage has already been done, he added, mostly to people who didn’t cause the problem.

“We are not sleepwalking into the apocalypse, we’re charging toward it with full awareness of what’s at stake,” he said. “Even more damning, we can already see the devastating effects of our actions tearing apart the livelihoods, and even the lives, of vulnerable, often poor, low-emitting communities far from the high-emitting areas where we live, and frequently comprised of people of colour.”

12) The world has been warming faster than expected. Scientists now think they know why.

This paper is related to the previous two items as it addresses "darkening of Earth", the third way James Hansen and his team have shown climate sensitivity is higher than the IPCC believe. It also addresses the issue of reduced sulfate aerosols because of the reduction in emissions from shipping over the last few years, which is a significant contributor to the current increased warming rate according to the Hansen reports in the previous item.

"Last year was the hottest on record, oceans boiled, glaciers melted at alarming rates, and it left scientists scrambling to understand exactly why. They know the extraordinary heat was fueled by a number of factors, predominantly planet-heating pollution from burning fossil fuels and the natural climate pattern El Niño. But those alone did not explain the unusually rapid temperature rise.

Now a new study published Thursday in the journal Science says it has identified the missing part of the puzzle: clouds. To be more specific, the rapid surge in warming was supercharged by a dearth of low-lying clouds over the oceans, according to the research — findings which may have alarming implications for future warming. In simple terms, fewer bright, low clouds mean the planet “has darkened,” allowing it to absorb more sunlight, said Helge Goessling, a report author and climate physicist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany."

You can read the full article on the CNN website

13) Global economy could face 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 from climate shocks, say actuaries.

This article from the Guardian discusses a report released in January by risk management experts at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA). I've believed for some time now that we can learn plenty about our predicament by observing what insurance companies are thinking and what they are concluding from their constant assessment of the risks their businesses face from increasing environmental disruption.

The report states -

"The climate risk assessments being used by financial institutions, politicians and civil servants to assess the economic effects of global heating were wrong, the report said, because they ignored the expected severe effects of climate change such as tipping points, sea temperature rises, migration and conflict as a result of global heating.

“[They] do not recognise there is a risk of ruin. They are precisely wrong, rather than being roughly right,” the report said. If these risks were taken into account the world faced an increasing risk of “planetary insolvency”, where the Earth’s systems were so degraded that humans could no longer receive enough of the critical services they relied on to support societies and economies.

“You can’t have an economy without a society, and a society needs somewhere to live,” said Trust.

“Nature is our foundation, providing food, water and air, as well as the raw materials and energy that power our economy. Threats to the stability of this foundation are risks to future human prosperity which we must take action to avoid.”

The report, named Planetary Solvency – finding our balance with nature, criticises the dominant economic theory used by governments in the UK, US and across the developed world, which focuses on what humans can take from the planet to create growth for themselves and fails to take into account the real risks from nature degradation to societies and economies."

14) Street art.

I recently came across a piece of street art done by an Italian artist called Blu in 2015. I thought some of you might like to check it out on this street art website. It gives some food for thought about our current predicament and how, after four and a half billion years of Planet Earth we have ended up where we are right now.

15) There are many ways Trump could trigger a global collapse. Here’s how to survive if that happens.

George Monbiot had this article published in the Guardian recently, which expresses well some of what I've attempted to address in my introduction to this newsletter.

In the article George says - "Though we might find it hard to imagine, we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure.

There are several possible mechanisms. Let’s start with an obvious one: their assault on financial regulation. Trump’s appointee to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Russell Vought, has suspended all the agency’s activity, slashed its budget and could be pursuing Musk’s ambition to “delete” the bureau. The CFPB was established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis, to protect people from the predatory activity that helped trigger the crash. The signal to the financial sector could not be clearer: “Fill your boots, boys.” A financial crisis in the US would immediately become a global crisis."

He goes on at the end of the article to talk about what we might do to prepare ourselves better for the growing challenges resulting from our unsustainable lifestyles and expanding geopolitical upheaval.

"Every government should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. But, as they do with climate and ecological breakdown, freshwater depletion, the possibility of food system collapse, antibiotic resistance and nuclear proliferation, most governments, including the UK’s, now seem to hope for the best and leave it there. So, though there is no substitute for effective government, we must seek to create our own backup systems.

Start with this principle: don’t face your fears alone. Make friends, meet your neighbours, set up support networks, help those who are struggling. Since the dawn of humankind, those with robust social networks have been more resilient than those without. Discuss what we confront, explore the means by which we might respond. Through neighbourhood networks, start building a deliberative, participatory democracy, to resolve at least some of the issues that can be fixed at the local level. If you can, secure local resources for the community. From democratised neighbourhoods, we might seek to develop a new politics, along the lines proposed by Murray Bookchin, in which decisions are passed upwards, not downwards, with the aim of creating a political system not only more democratic than those we currently suffer, but which also permits more diversity, redundancy and modularity.

Yes, we also – and urgently – need national and global action, brokered by governments. But it’s beginning to look as if no one has our backs. Prepare for the worst."

16) Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’.

I've included this article because it highlights the incredibly simplistic and basically irrational decisions being made by the Trump administration, the consequences of which all inhabitants of Planet Earth have to live with. I have no doubt that there will be plenty of people and organisations that double down and put more effort into trying to bring about the changes we need to maintain a liveable planet but the extreme polarisation and overbearing distraction resulting from actions such as this make the task so much more difficult.

"The Trump administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains a word it finds particularly inconvenient: “climate.” The US government is withdrawing grants and other support for research that even references the climate crisis, academics have said, amid Donald Trump’s blitzkrieg upon environmental regulations and clean-energy development.

Trump, who has said that the climate crisis is a “giant hoax”, has already stripped mentions of climate change and global heating from government websites and ordered a halt to programs that reference diversity, equity and inclusion. A widespread funding freeze for federally backed scientific work also has been imposed, throwing the US scientific community into chaos."

You can check out the full article if interested.

This Guardian article titled 'Cruel and thoughtless’: Trump fires hundreds at US climate agency Noaa, (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) is another example highlighting the theme of this newsletter.

17) Art and Storytelling for Systemic Change with Dougald Hine.

"How can we foster emotional resilience in the face of ecological overshoot and the death of modernity? What role do art and storytelling play alongside science and data in responding to our collective human predicament? And how can we strengthen our communities and plant the seeds for a different way of life, starting in our own small corners of the world?"

If this quote has any meaning for you and you wish to put aside some time to listen and learn then I recommend watching the YouTube discussion between Dougald and Nate Hagens from February 13th.

"When we started Dark Mountain what we were doing in a sense was creating a campfire around which is possible to gather if you had got to the point where the story you had been inhabiting no longer made sense to you, the things you were saying in your speeches or articles or whatever it was no longer rang true to you and you didn't know what was worth saying or worth doing and here was a space to which it was possible to come where you could wait for a while, being in conversation with others, not be judged for or feel rushed into action or to answers and for a lot of people who I worked with in those years it felt like Dark Mountain was a journey to the far side of despair. Sometimes despair is not a thing to be fought of at all costs but a dark night of the soul you need to go through but you go through it and the answer is not be stuck doom scrolling for the rest of your life, the answer is actually that you let yourself be changed by that and as you say you come through and emerge with your world view reconfigured, reshaped. Things that you weren't taking seriously before are marked on the map now. There's other kinds of work worth doing and that's why this book is called "At Work in the Ruins", the sort of two claims in the title. On the one hand there are ruins around and ahead of us that's not a thing that can be avoided if we make the right choices, on the other hand there is work to do. I say near the end of the book I don't think any of us know and I don't think it's helpful to talk as if we could know exactly how all of this plays out. We know enough to have a sense of how deeep the trouble is, but it may worth working on the assumption that what we're in, what's around and ahead of us is one of those great bottlenecks within the history of this living world and that in different ways we may have a chance of affecting how much comes through that bottleneck and in what shape including how much humanity and in what shape, what forms, what ways of being human together."

LOCAL

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

13/09/24 - The ‘bearers of civilisation’ and the crises we created.
It is worth noting that this article written by Don Quick was chosen to be included on Stuff's Forever Project page on their website.

13/10/24 - The right to repair is a climate issue too.

09/11/24 - The faster you go, the bigger the mess.

2) Marlborough Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group Plan 2025-2030.

The CDEM Plan went out for public consultation in September. CKM made a submission to the plan which you can read if interested.

Here is an extract from our submission - 

Objective 1: Managing risks states:
“Where we want to be: Marlborough is a risk-aware District that takes all practicable steps to identify, prioritise, and manage risks that could impact the wellbeing and prosperity of all those who live, work, or visit here.”

We fully support Objective 1. We do though, wish to offer some words of caution regarding interpretation of the definition of this objective. Being "risk-aware" is a laudable aim but begs the question - How are those risks defined and who defines them?

We are aware at central and local government levels of a tendency to downplay the potential risks arising from the consequences of global heating and biodiversity loss and degradation. There is a wide body of scientific evidence available that informs us that the actual risks we face are higher than our politicians would want us to believe. Even when assessment of the risks is realistic, invariably the actions required to meaningfully reduce those risks fall short. It is certainly clear that central government decisions over multiple governments indicate a downplaying of the risks and a prioritising of economic needs above the needs of Te Taiao. This blinkered view of the world we live in fails to fully recognise the critical importance of maintaining the viability of the biosphere if we are to succeed in retaining a liveable planet. Accepting this predicament is an important component of achieving a truly "risk-aware" plan.

The Mayor Nadine Taylor also wrote an opinion piece for the local paper titled "You could be your neighbour’s first responder" where she said - "We are, as a region and nation, exposed to more hazards than ever before, particularly with the effects of climate change now upon us. Marlborough has seen the impact of the increased intensity of weather events firsthand in 2021 and 2022, with many homes evacuated for safety."

3) National Gravel Bed River (GBR) project’s final findings out.

The final report from the Gravel Bed Rivers National Project was presented to Council at the Environment and Planning meeting on October 3rd. Check out the MDC media release for more info. If you're interested in the science detail you can download the pdf files of the Final Report and view the presentation given to a Council workshop on September 10th. They are both available on the "Reports and Presentations" page of their website under the heading "Yearly Reports 2024".

The main findings of the report were:

• Braided rivers should be considered as a “river system”, comprising their river channels, gravel beds and the water stored within those gravel beds.
• Braided rivers have their own distinct aquifer (braidplain aquifer) formed by movement of bed sediments during flooding, and which temporarily store water which is exchanged with river channels.
• Braided river systems can be hydraulically perched above the regional groundwater table or hydraulically connected as is the case for the Wairau River system.
• Recharge to the Wairau Aquifer from the Wairau River system is dynamic and depends on channel-aquifer head differences. The Wairau River provides recharge at an average rate of 6.65 m 3 /s to the Wairau Aquifer (range 4 to 26 m 3 /s).
• The most permeable gravel layer beneath the Wairau River and forming the Wairau Aquifer on the river berms is very thin (<8 metres) and sensitive to changes in levels in either water body.
• Braiding distributes water more evenly across the braidplain aquifer and promotes higher groundwater levels. Channelisation increases water level fluctuations and scoring compounds it, allowing groundwater levels to fall to very low levels during low flow periods.
• Wairau River flood protection works have reduced the degree of braiding since 1960 leading inadvertently to lower channel levels relative to the Wairau Aquifer and reduced exchange with groundwater, all other factors being equal.
• Continued lowering of the Wairau River bed would reduce security of supply for irrigators and cause further spring recession. Bed raising would increase cost of gravel, increase security of supply for irrigators and reduce spring recession.
• Widening of the Wairau River bed would potentially provide a one-off gravel source, decrease the depth of scouring, and promote braiding.

MDC groundwater scientist Peter Davidson says -

“The latest research from 3 case studies around NZ is being applied in a discrete reach of the Wairau River to enhance aquifer recharge to provide future certainty for irrigators, the environment and municipal supplies. MDC won’t compromise the flood protection of the Wairau but is using world class research in a practical way to optimise the net change in gravel and may trial some fine tuning of river control approaches."

Peter also presented the latest groundwater quantity State of the Environment (SoE) report at the November 14th committee meeting and says -
 
"This is the precursor to the Marlborough Environment Plan (MEP) limits review which is a much larger exercise and won’t be ready until next year as there is aquifer modelling involved which is taking longer than expected.”

Points to note from the report are –

1) That the Riverlands aquifer allocation is not likely to be sustainable. I would say this is a definite as sea levels rise.

2) That the declining trend in the Wairau aquifer is largely caused by long term external factors, not abstraction, though abstraction was a clear contributing factor last summer with the drought conditions causing the aquifer to fall to its lowest ever recorded levels. It goes without saying that increased incidence of droughts will exacerbate the aquifer decline. The completion of the hydrological review next year, which will make recommendations for managing water allocations from the Wairau aquifer, will be interesting to see. There will have to be changes to the current management regime.

You can read a summary of the Groundwater Quantity SoE report in the November 14th meeting agenda. It is item number 12 or you can download a copy of the full report if interested.

4) Marlborough Biodiversity Forum maps.

Over the past few months organisers of the Marlborough Biodiversity Forum have been collating information on where conservation restoration work is being undertaken across Marlborough. Thanks to MDC we now have resulting maps for the Sounds and South Marlborough.
 
5) VEGAN Convergence Of the Peoples (V-COP) presentation by James Wilson.

Long time member of CKM James Wilson, who many of you will know, recently gave a presentation to the world V-COP conference in Arizona. James says -

"I know that my views can be seen as too strong, but I am now convinced that 10,000+ years of human de-wilding has built up a huge reservoir of CO2, to which we are now adding fossil derived carbon. Sailesh Rao, shows clearly that eliminating livestock is more immediately necessary than curtailing fossil fuel burning.  We are presently blinded by the focus on fossil fuels that we, nation-wide, regard meat production and eating as sacrosanct.  Things have to change."

If you're interested please check out the full paper.

NATIONAL

6) Free labour: how bird poo is helping replant our native forests.

Now, here's a positive idea for improving biodiversity and native forest cover by working with nature. There are many areas around NZ where natural regeneration of native forest occurs and this simple idea can speed up that process by proactively planting native fruiting trees to attract birds to spread plant seeds.

"What if the solution to restore our native forests more effectively, efficiently, and cheaply has been flying around us all along? That’s the question being explored at Waikereru, a 120-hectare haven for native plants and animals. Located along a winding inland gravel road just nine kilometres from Gisborne, Waikereru is one of the country’s biggest ecological experiments. The latest hypothesis being put to the test is ‘seed islands’.

• Step one: Plant an area of native fruiting trees to attract local bird populations.
• Step two: Let nature do its thing.

The idea is simple enough and seems to work – even if it was initially unintentional. Long-lived trees in temperate rainforests across the country and at Waikereru are among the best in the world for storing carbon dioxide. Their intertwined root networks also hold the land together, providing much better erosion control than pine plantations. “You have indigenous forest instead of pine plantations, lots of biodiversity, clean streams, beautiful landscapes, microclimates, and not all that sediment and forestry waste going downstream and ending up in the ocean.” Waikereru is now home to a multitude of creatures, including insects, butterflies, moths, lizards, and long-tailed bats."

Check out the full article on the Predator Free NZ website.

7) Electrification could save NZ $95 billion by 2040: report.

This is a follow up to item number 18 in the August newsletter about the "Rewiring Aotearoa" organisation and its chief scientist Saul Griffith. You can listen to the full interview with Kathryn Ryan on the RNZ Nine to Noon programme for more info.

"New Zealand households could save as much as $95 billion dollars by 2040 if the country fully electrifies the economy, according to an international renewable energy advocate. Dr Saul Griffith founded Rewiring America, and Rewiring Australia - and is in New Zealand presenting a report pushing the case that electrification is ultimately cheaper than using fossil fuels. Dr Griffith and his co-authors, including the Reserve Bank chief economist Paul Conway, say there should be a systemic approach to adopting solutions like widespread rooftop solar uptake. Tax incentives and Government finance would be tools to be used, but also addressing workforce change, and consenting. Dr Griffiths' 'Investing in Tomorrow' report says New Zealanders are spending about $20 billion a year on imported fossil fuels but could save over four times that by swapping out fossil fuel burning cars and appliances - for electric equivalents."

If interested you can also listen to an interview with Saul by Jack Tame on TVNZ Q&A programme.

8) More rooftop solar in cities would help solve NZ’s energy crisis – and build disaster resilience.

More on electrification. I'm particularly interested in the opportunity to build disaster resilience to help lessen the inevitable impacts globally of climate breakdown and environmental degradation. 

"New Zealand’s current electricity supply crisis requires immediate solutions. But we argue the government’s emphasis on importing natural gas and construction of centralised solar farms is a missed opportunity. The case against gas has been highly publicised because of its greenhouse gas emissions and substantial costs. But the government’s focus on large solar infrastructure in rural areas, away from our main centres, misses a chance to address two urgent issues at once – the need to cut emissions and to adapt to climate impacts. Instead, we should plan local renewable energy generation, integrated into communities, to improve New Zealand’s energy security and disaster preparedness."

You can read the full article in The Conversation.

9) What’s the point of the Fast-Track Bill?

I thought this article published in NZ Geographic asking about the point of the Fast-Track Bill is well worth a read. They point out that the Bill is set to green-light projects that clash with local council planning, the government’s future goals, and our international agreements.

Richard Capie, general manager of advocacy at Forest & Bird is quoted saying -

"You’ve got the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment raising major red flags, and the Attorney-General warning against bad lawmaking. You’ve got the Auditor-General saying he has deep concerns about this. So, how many heavyweights do we need to wade in and say, ‘Look, this needs to get fixed?”.

Another article was published on the Scoop website and titled "Fast-Tracking Wealth Accumulation And The War On Nature". In it the author Ian Powell says -

"The official description of the bill is that it aims to provide a more efficient and certain pathway for projects to seek approvals. This is to be done by consolidating multiple approval processes that are typically required for large or complex projects, in a one-stop-shop arrangement.
The reality is that it is that is about prioritising economic development by removing any so-called ‘red tape’ that gets in the way. This includes environmental protections and safeguards, including for clean water and preventing extinction."

10) Hope or Alarmism? Messaging and Planetary Boundaries.

I've put this blog from Graham Townsend in the newsletter because, as readers will know I'm seriously concerned about the impacts of exceeding Planetary Boundaries. His article is thought provoking and some of you may appreciate his forthright views, some of you may find them challenging? He starts the blog with this quote from a recent academic paper outlining our current situation.

"We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.... Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high...current policies have us on track for approximately 2.7 degrees Celsius peak warming by 2100... Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we can now only hope to limit the extent of the damage."

Graham makes the following observation -

"It seems to me that if we want results, the only lever we can pull is to ask people to care about their kids’ future. What we can still do is to prevent the global mean temperate rise from going much above +3oC. And if we want to fight for our kids’ future, we have the tools to do that: sharply cut personal GHG emissions, and get political.

We can and must offer that much hope. The best recipe, I suspect, might be:

• DON’T hide the truth.
• DON’T sell delusional optimism.
• DO point out the options we still have - IF we all work together, now."

I do understand that there is a very fine line to walk when it comes to the issue of optimism versus pessimism in the context of the climate and environmental challenges we all face. It's something I think about quite a lot because we need to have hope that together we can find ways to adapt and change our excessive consumer driven lifestyles. Recognising that we are exceeding six of the nine planetary boundaries as defined by the Stockholm Resilience Centre is an essential first step in the process in that process. "Delusional optimism" is certainly not going to help. Honesty is required.  

Here's another blog from Graham on the same topic - PLANETARY OVERSHOOT and THE THREAT OF FASCISM

"A rudderless society crying out for strong leadership is a happy hunting-ground for populists in the Trump mould. Their seductively shallow ‘solutions’ appeal to the desire for a return to certainty, to the good old days of economic security, and to a father figure, a fuhrer, who will do our thinking for us. No matter that such populists tend to be narcissists and morally dubious; or that they are frequently beholden to corporate backers whose main aim is to boost their own wealth and influence. No matter that history shows how swiftly populists can become autocrats once in power. No matter that they typically increase inequality and poverty by boosting deregulation and the dismantling of social security and environmental controls. No matter that they damage democracy by cracking down on diversity and dissent. No matter that — by pandering to polluting industries — they accelerate ecological overshoot and further damage the economy. When people feel insecure and anxious, it’s all too easy for critical thinking and compassion to be drowned out by the cult of leadership and the promise of salvation.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

The answer — if there is one — lies in ending complacency. That means:

• Encouraging wider participation in open democracy. Citizens’ assemblies appear to be a constructive model for this.
• Educating the public to understand and accept the reality of planetary boundaries, and
• Encouraging people to see that their kids’ future depends on voluntary economic constraint, especially by the wealthiest 10% of humanity."
  

11) So what is ‘realistic’, minister? Simon Watts says buying more offshore climate credit is ‘unrealistic’. Pat Baskett looks at what that could mean – and what we should be doing to address our emissions.

I found this opinion piece written by Pat Baskett and published on the Newsroom website very interesting. I had heard of the Motu report referred to in the article but had not looked into the detail. This article highlights an issue that I have felt strongly about for sometime now. I believe that the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC's) that individual countries committed to at the Paris climate talks and updated further since have very little chance of being met by the great majority of countries. I expect that the closer we get to 2030 the more noise we will hear about why countries will have to postpone or cancel their commitments. The economy invariably takes precedence over the livability and future of our home - Planet Earth. One of the commenters to the article made a succinct analysis, which I agree with, when she said - "I think the Government is banking on no other country meeting its targets either and all reneging on off shore credits or on shore reductions. Austerity and hoping for the best being their playbook."

Here is an extract from the article -

Climate Change Minister Simon Watts is in an interesting position. He knows we’re 100 million tonnes of CO2e short of meeting the emissions reductions target we signed up to at the Paris COP in 2015. Known as our Nationally Determined Contribution, this target was designed to keep global temperature rises to 1.5C. It’s due in 2030.

We signed up knowing the only way we could meet the target was by paying another country to do what we couldn’t – reduce emissions – and adding their saved tonnes to our account.

The figure of 1.5C is now tragically out of date. The fact we’re looking at 3C by century’s end ought to have us panic-stricken and trebling our efforts to quit fossil fuels. But Watts has ruled out buying offshore climate credits. At the Sustainable Business Council’s conference in September on climate change and business he described the suggestion as “unrealistic”.

“We need to do everything possible in order to reduce our domestic emissions at a profile that doesn’t decimate our economy.”

And how much would that be? Scandalously little is the answer. Granted, total annual emissions fell a miniscule 1.8 percent over the year to June 2023 when compared to the previous year. ‘Downward drivers,’ according to Stats NZ, are in electricity, gas, water and waste services. Emissions from transport, postal and warehousing continue to rise – at 38 percent.

We’re not the only ones to fail. The latest World Meteorological Organization’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin showed that all three main greenhouse gases (CO2, methane and nitrous oxide) reached record levels last year. In the past 10 years CO2 has risen 11.4 percent and is now at 420 parts per million.

Motu, the economic and public policy research institute based in Wellington, recently held a webinar titled Think globally, act Cooperatively: Progressing Offshore Mitigation for Aotearoa New Zealand. Their work has considerable international standing and their research analyses this issue from multiple aspects. The paper that preceded the webinar opens with a bias that confounds the minister’s stance. Its lead paragraph says the paper’s aim is to show how we could work with other countries “to accelerate global climate progress, by funding offshore mitigation to help meet (our) 2030 target … The world is off track to prevent dangerous climate change”.

INTERNATIONAL

12) COP29 — This Year’s Global Climate Summit. What happened — or rather, didn’t — at the annual climate talks.

The COP climate talks continue with the usual pattern of lots of talking and little action of any substance. In this article from the Global Citizen website they state - "When you consider that Fossil fuel lobbyists were granted more COP29 passes than delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries, strongly suggesting that their presence may have had an impact on the failed negotiations."

Why am I not surprised that no meaningful decisions were made. Here is an extract from the article -

"Over the last two weeks, more than 65,000 delegates came together to work on the next global climate agreement at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the UN’s annual climate conference event. Held from Nov. 11 to Nov. 22 and unofficially dubbed as the “Finance COP,” many hoped that negotiations would result in an ambitious climate funding package for the world. Unfortunately, the goal of getting richer countries to agree to commit sufficient funds to alleviate climate impacts faced by vulnerable nations was nowhere near met.

COP29 is ending on a somber note. Stumbling so drastically at the finish line has left many disheartened with how discussions went — and even questioning if it’s worth coming to the negotiating table at all. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” commented Fadhel Kaboub, Senior Advisor at Power Shift Africa. As lower-income countries express outrage at the $250 billion proposition, COP29 wraps up with no clear consensus. With financial negotiations dragging on until the very last hours, countries on the frontlines of climate change made it clear they will not accept “breadcrumbs.” Baku wraps up with little success at bridging the enormous climate finance gap that many hoped it would."

This further article from the Guardian gives more detail about the final outcome at Baku. The decision was made to pledge US$300 billion, an increase of US$50 billion and still a totally inadequate amount to help meet the challenges of those countries most impacted by climate disruption.

Early on Sunday morning, ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries gathered in Baku’s Olympic stadium to witness the drama of fossil fuel wealth battling with science, which says that continuing to burn oil, gas and coal will bring havoc and destruction to the planet if temperatures are not limited to a rise of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Most observers would say that science lost.
At stake in Baku was the money needed to help poor countries shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt their infrastructure to the impacts of extreme weather. About $1.3tn (£1tn) a year will be needed by 2035 for countries to achieve this, and for the world to stay within the 1.5C limit.

A deal on how to get some way to reaching that target was struck in that hall, but it was one so hedged, loose and half-hearted that many cried betrayal. Representatives of the least developed countries (LDCs) negotiating bloc said: “[We are] outraged and deeply hurt by the outcome of Cop29. Once again, the countries most responsible for the climate crisis have failed us. This is not just a failure. It’s a betrayal.”
Only $300bn of the promised total will come directly from the budgets of developed countries and public finance institutions, such as the World Bank. The great majority of that money should be in the form of grants and low-interest loans, but loose wording means even that commitment is hedged – the cash could come from “a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral and alternative sources”.

13) A Global System Growing Itself to Death—and What We Can Do About It.

This article is written by H. Thomas Johnson who is professor of business at Portland State University and Distinguished Consulting Professor of Sustainable Business at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. This is another look at the impacts of unlimited growth on planetary life support systems.

"Undoubtedly no one seriously believes that the defining feature of the human economy should be the destruction of life. And yet today our economic activity is destroying Earth’s capacity to support life. To alter this condition, we must thoughtfully scrutinize our reasons for advocating continuous growth in production and consumption. If we should continue to pursue unlimited economic growth, the unanticipated consequences may exceed our most fearful imaginings."

This quote in his article is from Eco-philosopher Thomas Berry who in 1988 powerfully described this devastating transition in human history:

"In our times . . . human cunning has mastered the deep mysteries of the earth at a level far beyond the capacities of earlier peoples. We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throwaway paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil — all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning. We can invent computers capable of processing ten million calculations per second. And why? To increase the volume and the speed with which we move natural resources through the consumer economy to the junk pile or the waste heap. Our managerial skills are measured by the competence manifested in accelerating this process. If in these activities the topography of the planet is damaged, if the environment is made inhospitable for a multitude of living species, then so be it. We are, supposedly, creating a technological wonderworld (Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, Sierra Club Books, 1988)."

Here are two more quotes from the article -

"When we view economic activity through the lens of financial numbers such as profit, cost, income, and GDP, it becomes a quantitative abstraction, completely separated from the concrete activities that produce such numbers. Indeed, corporations are seldom held accountable for the true social and environmental costs of their actions, including polluted air and rivers, toxic food, scarred landscapes, scarce or tainted water, discarded human lives and communities. Seen in this light, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the modern industrial economy has been growing itself to death."

AND - "Endless growth in the human economy makes it impossible for Earth’s remarkable life system to flourish over the long run. However, almost all present-day programs to promote “sustainability” or “sustainable development” fail to question the assumption that growth is a necessary condition of human economic activity. Thus, they do no more than treat symptoms of the underlying disease; they do nothing to prevent the disease itself. And by simply alleviating, temporarily, some of the adverse consequences of growth, they avoid tackling the fundamental problem, which is to produce a condition of long-term sustainability in a context of no growth."

Check out the full article on The Systems Thinker website where the writer "suggests ways we might solve our economic problems and repair the current destructive global economy that is based on “the way man thinks.” These steps propose a positive future economy based on “the way nature works.”

14) US leads wealthy countries spending billions of public money on unproven ‘climate solutions’.

Here is more info about the big potential for wasting precious resources chasing so-called "climate solutions" rather than getting on with the task at hand - reducing emissions! Humans are so good at wanting to have their cake and eat it too!

The subsidies are a “colossal waste of money”, according to Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “It is nothing short of a travesty that funds meant to combat climate change are instead bolstering the very industries driving it.” “The history of CCS is depressing … and no significant innovations have improved CCS’s prospects,” said Charles Harvey, professor of environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-founded the first private CCS startup 15 years ago.

“Nonetheless, we are again wasting money on CCS that could be used instead to effectively cut emissions, distracting ourselves from the necessity of moving away from fossil fuels, and perpetuating a polluting industry whose local harms often fall on minority and economically disadvantaged communities.”

15) Pacific islands submit court proposal for recognition of ecocide as a crime.

This article in the Guardian provides an update on the progress of the initiative of some Pacific Island nations to have ecocide classed as a crime. Here is an extract -

"Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa have proposed a formal recognition by the court of the crime of ecocide, defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. The proposal was tabled before the ICC in New York on Monday afternoon, and will have to be discussed in full at a later date. Holding full discussions on the proposal is a process likely to take some years, and will face fierce opposition, though much of it will be behind the scenes as most countries will not wish to openly speak out against it.

Philippe Sands KC, a prominent international lawyer and professor of law at University College London, acted as a co-chair of the independent expert panel for the legal definition of ecocide, convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation. He told the Guardian he was “100% certain” that ecocide would eventually be recognised by the court. “The only question is when,” he said. “I was sceptical at first, but now I am a true believer. There has already been real change, as some countries have put it in domestic law. I think this is the right idea at the right time.”

The Conversation also published an article on the same matter headed "Pacific nations want ecocide to become a crime – here’s why NZ should support the proposal".

16) Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years.

Unfortunately this aspect of the polycrisis is probably more critical than many others. Without adequate fresh water to meet the daily needs of all life on the planet we will see the hastening of a collapse of the planetary life support systems. Why are we so blind to the consequences of our actions? Half the world’s population already faces water scarcity, and that number is set to rise as the climate crisis worsens, according to a report from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water published recently.

Five main takeaways from the report -

The world has a water crisis.

More than 2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 3.6 billion people – 44% of the population – lack access to safe sanitation. Every day, 1,000 children die from lack of access to safe water. Demand for fresh water is expected to outstrip its supply by 40% by the end of this decade. This crisis is worsening – without action, by 2050 water problems will shave about 8% off global GDP, with poor countries facing a 15% loss. Over half of the world’s food production comes from areas experiencing unstable trends in water availability.

There is no coordinated global effort to address this crisis.

Despite the interconnectedness of global water systems there are no global governance structures for water. The UN has held only one water conference in the past 50 years, and only last month appointed a special envoy for water.

Climate breakdown is intensifying water scarcity.

The impacts of the climate crisis are felt first on the world’s hydrological systems, and in some regions those systems are facing severe disruption or even collapse. Drought in the Amazon, floods across Europe and Asia, and glacier melt in mountains, which causes both flooding and droughts downstream, are all examples of the impacts of extreme weather that are likely to get worse in the near future. People’s overuse of water is also worsening the climate crisis – for instance, by draining carbon-rich peatlands and wetlands that then release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Water is artificially cheap for some and too expensive for others.

Subsidies to agriculture around the world often have unintended consequences for water, providing perverse incentives for farmers to over-irrigate their crops or use water wastefully. Industries also have their water use subsidised, or their pollution ignored, in many countries. Meanwhile, poor people in developing countries frequently pay a high price for water, or can only access dirty sources. Realistic pricing for water that removes harmful subsidies but protects the poor must be a priority for governments.

Water is a common good.

All of human life depends on water, but it is not recognised for the indispensable resource it is. The authors of the report urge a rethink of how water is regarded – not as an endlessly renewable resource, but as a global common good, with a global water pact by governments to ensure they protect water sources and create a “circular economy” for water in which it is reused and pollution cleaned up. Developing nations must be given access to finance to help them end the destruction of natural ecosystems that are a key part of the hydrological cycle.

Check out this article in the Guardian and this one from CNN for more info about the report.

17) Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread - Tim Winton.

Australian author Tim Winton has recently published a book called "Juice". This Guardian interview with Tim highlights the personal cost of writing such a confronting, no holds barred book. The extract below refers to Tim's contribution at the Perth Arts Festival two years ago.

"Two years ago, Tim Winton walked on stage at the Perth festival and delivered a blistering closing address that was, as he puts it now, “a bit like dropping a turd in the pool”. Perhaps some in the room had expected the Australian literary giant, Western Australia’s homegrown hero, to say something pretty and benign about the arts. Instead, Winton tore into fossil fuel giants Woodside and Chevron – both at that time long-term sponsors of Perth festival – with his plain-speaking, moral directness that comes through so clearly on the page.

That fossil fuel companies would – and could – sponsor cultural festivals even as they staged works about the climate crisis, was “really embarrassing”. He told the room: “For, who else in the corporate world, sailing so close to reputational oblivion, could feel that safe and so confident? You reckon a brewery would put itself forward for a show about foetal alcohol syndrome? How about tobacco sponsoring ventilators for lung patients?” As he pointed out, even banks and superfunds were divesting from fossil fuels: “So how is it that the arts community should show less creativity and moral imagination than bankers?”

What no one in that room knew, even some people very close to him, was that Winton was writing a novel about how future generations could react if they knew climate change was the result of choices we made now."

The Guardian published another article when the book was released titled "Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread". It's clear to me after reading both articles that the seven years he took to write the book have taken a toll on him and I appreciate the honesty he has shown in confronting the predicament facing all of us. I think we owe a big thankyou to people like Tim who are willing to stand up publicly and talk about the elephant in the room like he has. It can't be an easy road to take.

Here's an extract from the second article -

"Those in power cannot acknowledge what’s right before their eyes because to do so would not only undermine their status but threaten their very conception of reality. Securing a just and sustainable future will require many things to be smashed and cleared away. Not reformed incrementally but removed entirely. The opportunity for ameliorative tinkering has already been squandered.

But here’s the thing: the fossil powers and principalities are afraid. They know the tide has turned against them. Within the younger generations their social licence is in terminal decline. In both hemispheres, young people are educating themselves for struggle. They’re not just finding new cadres of solidarity and resistance – they’re developing sophisticated communications campaigns to expose the occupation and to unpick its layers of deceit. And they’re mounting electoral drives to unseat the quislings of oil and gas who stand in the way of serious climate action in parliaments and congresses everywhere."

18) Exported gas produces far worse emissions than coal, major study finds.

I thought this article would be of interest to NZ, with our politicians thinking of importing LNG.  Turns out, it has a greater carbon footprint than coal according to a new research paper!

Exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite fossil-fuel industry claims it is a cleaner alternative, according to a major new research paper that challenges the controversial yet rapid expansion of gas exports from the US to Europe and Asia. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels when combusted for energy, with oil and gas producers for years promoting cleaner-burning gas as a “bridge” fuel and even a “climate solution” amid a glut of new liquefied natural gas (or LNG) terminals, primarily in the US. But the research, which itself has become enmeshed in a political argument in the US, has concluded that LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal.

“The idea that coal is worse for the climate is mistaken – LNG has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than any other fuel,” said Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist at Cornell University and author of the new paper.
“To think we should be shipping around this gas as a climate solution is just plain wrong. It’s greenwashing from oil and gas companies that has severely underestimated the emissions from this type of energy.”
Drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from one country to another uses so much energy that the actual final burning of gas in people’s homes and businesses only accounts for about a third of the total emissions from this process, the research finds.
“This whole process is much more energy intensive than coal,” said Howarth. “The science is pretty clear here: it’s wishful thinking that the gas miraculously moves overseas without any emissions.”

Check out the full article in the Guardian.

19) Tales from the Carbon Pulse | Reality Roundtable 11.

Nate Hagens has a series of Reality Roundtable discussions on his website, "The Great Simplification". His recent discussion from August was with Tom Murphy, a professor of physics and DJ White who is a co-founder of Greenpeace International and founder of EarthTrust. Below is an outline of what they discussed. It is  one and a half hours long so only for those who want to go deeper into this area. It is challenging stuff but I appreciate the focus on why it is "so difficult for society to recognize the scale of ecological destruction, and what needs to change to raise awareness?" and "How could recognizing our kinship with all living beings reshape our relationship with the planet?" For me these are some of the big questions we have to find answers to.

The damaging effects of humanity’s disconnected relationship to Earth’s ecosystems are broad and deep. Yet, despite targeted efforts to address these issues and mitigate risks, our insatiable appetite for fossil hydrocarbons continues to grow at an alarming rate. What will it take to reframe our relationship with nature to move forward in a symbiotic, life-supporting path? In this episode, Nate is joined by longtime colleagues Tom Murphy and D.J. White for an in-depth exploration of the mounting ecological crises driven by human behavior and unsustainable energy consumption. Together, they offer both scientific insights and personal reflections on trends such as the rapid decline in wild animal populations, the rise of microplastic pollution, the overwhelming scale of human-built mass, and many other facets of this unparalleled time in human history. Why is it so difficult for society to recognize the scale of ecological destruction, and what needs to change to raise awareness? In what ways is academia struggling to provide the systems understanding we need to address the pressing environmental challenges of our time? How could recognizing our kinship with all living beings reshape our relationship with the planet?

You can check out the full discussion on YouTube if you're interested.

20) MG to launch solid-state batteries in 2025, leading EV race.

For anyone interested in battery development this information about the launch of solid state car batteries by MG is worth a look at. MG say that "this breakthrough technology will offer a substantial upgrade over existing lithium-ion batteries, boasting double the energy density. As a result, MG's upcoming EVs are expected to have longer ranges, lighter weight, and reduced production costs."

If you're interested in learning more about these new batteries this website has some basic info that's easy to understand.

LOCAL

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

25/05/2024 - Temporary rates rises? Don’t count on it.
22/06/2024 - A big bill coming due.
20/07/2024 - Are we ready and willing to adapt?
17/08/2024 - Living with loss and doing it well.

2) CKM presentation to the Select Committee on the Fast Track legislation.

There were 27,000 submissions with 2,900 requests to speak to the committee. The committee chose to hear from 1100 organisations and individuals who made unique submissions. CKM member Don Quick wrote our submission and also spoke to the Select Committee.
You can read both documents on our website.

3) CKM presentation to the MDC Long Term Plan hearings on June 12th.

If you're interested the CKM submission and subsequent presentation to the LTP hearings is available on our website.

We have also received a response from the Mayor to our contribution. In her letter she says - 

"Councillors acknowledge the level of care and partnership Climate Karanga Marlborough has when bringing matters to Council’s attention, this helps Council to stay focussed. Councillors also wanted to assure Climate Karanga that Council does take sustainability considerations seriously in its decision making."

4) CKM submission to the MfE Second Emissions Reduction Plan - ERP2.

Tom wrote our submission with the introduction and conclusions contributed by Don Quick. Here is a brief summary -

While the nation will easily meet the first emissions reduction target, due largely to the previous government’s emissions reductions programs, the termination of those programs and other factors mean that the government is 2 Mt CO2e over the 2nd emissions reduction target unless new additional emissions reductions are proposed. They propose a number of initiatives, but the 3 making the most difference (totally 3.8 Mt   CO2e reduction) are carbon capture and storage (CCS) at two gas fields in Taranaki and two unfunded initiatives for reductions in emissions  from organic waste and landfill. None of these initiatives, however, are beyond the discussion phase.
The overall flavour of the consultation  document was optimistic, although the overall message was quite pessimistic. Carbon prices on the NZ ETS are expected to peak at $75/t  CO2e in 2028, then drop back down to $50/t by 2035. This takes away incentive for businesses and industry to future reduce emissions, since it will quite cheap to just buy the emissions credits and carry on. The low carbon price will also likely inhibit the government’s plans for  private investment in CCS and waste minimisation, which it is counting on to meet the second emissions reduction target.
In addition,  modelling results shown in the plan predicts that we will likely exceed the 3rd emissions reduction plan target, the 2050 target to reduce biologic methane by 24-47% and the 2050 net zero long-lived gases target.

A full copy is available on our website.

NATIONAL

5) Robin Woodsford: Why Boomers should fight for the future.

Robin was interviewed by Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon recently. Lesley and I both recommend taking the time to listen to the 20 minute interview, whether you are a boomer or not.  

"It was the greatest generational shift the world had seen. Post-war babies who grew into young people not content to just accept the way things were - picking a fight against the 'isms': racism, sexism, militarism, consumerism. But they didn't realise how much they'd been shaped by the traumatised parents who raised them. Robin Woodsford has examined this in his book, 'Me and my generation: Why Boomers should claim the past and fight for the future'.

He was an activist himself, working for the Young Christian Workers movement in the 70s, before going on to become a youth worker, counsellor and therapist. His book is part memoir, part exploration of what the Baby Boomer generation stood for - and where it ran out of mojo. He makes the argument that the job's not done, and fellow Boomers should be thinking hard about how to make their legacy count."  

6) Climate change: simultaneous views from above and below.

Our Climate Declaration hosted a very interesting webinar with Sir Peter Gluckman in June which you can access on their website.

Below is the abstract giving some info about the topic discussed. I think his focus on the difficulties society faces due to polarisation are very pertinent. We have to find ways to slow and reverse this polarisation. The evidence is more and more compelling that it is driving us towards more and more conflict and fragmentation resulting in more and more damaging outcomes for our planetary life support systems. 

"In 2015 in a much more settled geopolitical era, the United Nations unanimously adopted Agenda 2030 which is largely described in the accompanying Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 10 years later, both political and scientific progress has been disappointing; this year the multilateral system will gather for the Summit of the Futures. Climate action is detailed in SDG 13 and like actions across the other sixteen goals, progress has been disappointing.   The reasons are multiple; the failure of political systems to think long-term, the increasingly divided and geopolitically tense multilateral stage, and especially the interconnected nature of the SDGs which makes it difficult to progress on one without considering the others.

Science itself has continued to focus largely on describing the problem with less attention to producing actionable knowledge; the latter requires new modes of doing research. Technological progress is being made but it too has spillover costs. Societies, including our own, will have complex choices to make over employing some technologies which may well be needed or would beneficially change the trajectory of warming.

Actionable knowledge needs to impact on citizens locally, create narratives that bring consensual action, effect policy makers nationally, and hopefully drive nation states to collectively understand that it truly is in their self-interest for more effective global action. This is a major challenge for diplomacy and New Zealand needs to rebuild its efforts in science diplomacy.

The challenge is how to address it in a way that maintains societal cohesion rather than promotes fragmentation and reactions and accusations of alarmism. Neither data nor alarmism alone will change the future. We must address the political reality that all citizens need to accept the tradeoffs and choices that need to be made. How to change the conversation while maintaining a democratic ethos is central to progress in addressing climate change."

Sir Peter is also the Director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures. This group is an independent, non-partisan think tank and research centre based at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland with members throughout New Zealand and the world who focus on critical long-term national and global challenges arising from rapid and far-reaching social, economic, technological and environmental change.

7) Recloaking Papatūānuku

I included an item about the Recloaking Papatūānuku initiative from the Pure Advantage group in the May newsletter. In this article from Dame Anne Salmond published on the Newsroom website she says "Continuing to plant pine forests in response to climate change treats rural Kiwis as collateral and ignores past mistakes. Restoring native forests, however, offers hope to those who have suffered the most".  It is well worth a read if you're interested in this topic. 

Pure Advantage have also published 10 asks of Government as a part of delivering Recloaking Papatūānuku:

Whilst the Government is keen to see the private sector design and Nature-based solutions, ultimately we need the Government to act as a key enabling and implementing partner to deliver a programme, like Recloaking Papatūānuku, at the scale and with the urgency needed.

Some key enablers that Government should urgently address that would unlock progress include:

1. Fast-tracking a high-integrity, internationally reputable ecosystem restoration / nature-positive incentives scheme for landowners.
2. If forestry remains in the Emissions Trading Scheme, exploring the opportunity to qualitatively differentiate forestry credits so as to better reward indigenous forests (and their co-benefits).
3. Driving investor confidence in a robust high-integrity, internationally-aligned domestic Voluntary Carbon Market.
4. Properly recognising our Nationally Determined Contributions on the Crown accounts.
5. Making Recloaking Papatūānuku part of our Global Biodiversity Framework commitments at October’s Convention on Biological Diversity COP in Colombia.
6. Properly recognising and funding the critical role of the Department of Conservation and Predator Free 2050 in landscape restoration, particularly through the  significantly scaling up of animal pest and weed interventions across the conservation and Crown pastoral estate.
7. Enabling Crown Pastoral leaseholders to register indigenous afforestation and restoration efforts in the Emissions Trading Scheme (through legislative amendments).
8. Outlining the role Government sees the private sector performing to support landscape-scale ecological restoration and how it will facilitate nature-positive investments, including by leading the international implementation of Nature-Related Financial Disclosure requirements.
9. Recognising, incentivising, and supporting enhanced measurement techniques in relation to the sequestration effects of pest eradication and other restoration interventions, including additional sequestration gains in pre-1990 forests.
10. An unequivocal, public statement by the Government in support of Recloaking Papaptūānuku for all of its benefits and a commitment to further exploring its implementation as a means to amplify and galvanise collective action.

8) 'You can't plant your way out of this problem': Worry at government's pine-heavy carbon plan.

The government's focus on planting pine trees to solve climate change will only push costs onto remote communities and avoid solving the real problem: fossil fuels, campaigners say. The government's draft Emissions Reduction Plan contains little in the way of spending on reducing emissions, preferring to go for what the government says is the more affordable option of offsetting carbon emissions with low-cost trees.

Polluters can buy unlimited quantities of pine-based carbon credits under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), and the government intends to lean almost exclusively on the ETS to meet climate targets - with no limit on how much pollution can be offset, versus cut at the source. The draft plan also promises to explore technological solutions like storing carbon dioxide in underground reservoirs, as well as nature-based options such as absorbing carbon by re-wetting peatlands.

"You can't plant your way out of this problem," said WWF's Kayla Kingdon-Bebb. "It's really disappointing that this plan has pivoted so hard away from gross emissions reduction. It's really just kicking the can down the road in a very unhelpful way. We only have so much land in New Zealand that's suitable for planting, and there's a reason that widespread pine plantation has been controversial. If we're going to be pursuing a programme of aggressive afforestation, it needs to be native afforestation."

Check out the full article on the RNZ website.

9) A new ruling says countries – including NZ – must take action on climate change under the law of the sea.

This is another significant milestone achieved through legal action rather than political action. We can't rely on politicians to take the necessary action, as they have little incentive when such actions impact their primary interests of GDP and "growth", so other ways such as this, are important avenues for forcing change. The Tribunals strong support for the request described below is encouraging.

"In a significant development for small island nations threatened by rising seas, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has found greenhouse gases constitute marine pollution. The tribunal handed down a unanimous advisory opinion this week in its first climate-related judgement. It declared countries must take measures to combat climate change in order to preserve the marine environment under the law of the sea.

The ruling responds to a request from the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS). The commission sought to clarify whether obligations to prevent pollution and protect the marine environment under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) apply to climate change and ocean acidification. The tribunal’s answer was an emphatic yes. This means countries, including New Zealand, must now address climate change under both the law of the sea and international climate agreements."

You can check out the full article on The Conversation website.

10) The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s Advisory Opinion on Climate Change and Its Implications.

The Opinion is the first in a trio of advisory opinions by international courts that will likely be issued within twelve months of each other.  It is envisaged that next, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“IACHR”) will deliver its opinion regarding States’ obligations derived from human rights norms in relation to the climate emergency.  The International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) will then opine on the obligations of States under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system from anthropogenic GHGs for present and future generations, as well as the legal consequences for States where they, by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system.  These opinions are expected in early- and mid- 2025, respectively.

Notably, the Opinion was issued just six weeks after the European Court of Human Rights’ (“ECtHR’s”) judgment in KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland, in which the ECtHR, for the first time in its history, prescribed the content of States’ positive obligations under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”) in the context of climate change.  According to the ECtHR, States have a primary duty to adopt, and to effectively apply in practice, general measures for achieving carbon neutrality—and with a view to achieving neutrality within the next three decades.

You can read more about this opinion on the website of Gibson Dunn, a large corporate legal firm and also in this article published on RNZ.

11)  Unprecedented ocean change may impact key NZ fisheries.

More marine heatwaves likely for NZ this summer; study reveals risk to critical ocean species

"NIWA scientists have seen substantial changes in the ocean to the east of New Zealand, with possible impacts for important fisheries. Since 2006, strong, full-depth ocean warming has occurred south of the Chatham Islands at around 5x the global rate because of the ocean currents moving 120km west."

You can learn more about this research on the NIWA website.

I have a particular interest in this second article from the NZ Herald about the impacts of these marine heat waves. We lived near Punakaiki in the 1970's and '80's and regularly collected bull kelp for our garden and orchard. To see in this article that nearly all bull kelp in the West Coast’s Punakaiki Marine Reserve have been wiped out is very sad. This is confirmation of what we have heard from old friends still living in the area.

12) Environment and economics: A marriage of (in)convenience?

This speech by the Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton to the EDS conference on June 12th in Christchurch is well worth a read if you haven't seen it. I find his contributions to the public discourse to be thought provoking and insightful and this speech is no different. Here is a taste of his speech - 

"Environmentalists are very good at pointing out inconvenient truths. They supply a sort of portable plug-in conscience for a society that is only too happy to overlook accumulating environmental pressures in favour of making hay in the short term. They upend John Maynard Keynes’ famous observation that “the long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.” Environmentalists insist that current affairs provide an excellent guide to where we will end up if we don’t change course.

But I didn’t come here today to talk about what a wonderful job environmentalists do. There is a danger that we all get into a bubble of clear-sighted, righteous agreement that if only other people had sufficient political will and shared our views, we’d be well on our way to the promised land. I’d prefer, instead, to turn the spotlight back on ourselves and address some of the economic elephants in the room that make environmentalism so much harder than a few slogans can make it seem."

AND - "Given that we are a biological economy, the lack of data we have on the claims agriculture makes on soil and water is truly disturbing."

I recommend checking out the full speech.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment office also submitted to the Government's Emissions Reduction Plan.

You can read about it and download their full submission from their website. Below is an extract.

"The Commissioner has made a submission on New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan (ERP2) outlining how the plan’s ‘least cost approach’ risks passing on undue costs to future generations. He describes ERP2 as a mixed bag of policies designed to deliver the minimum reductions required, and possibly not even achieving that. There is a very real risk that New Zealand won’t even meet the first or second budget with the policy mix that is proposed. The projected reduction only just adds up and margins are thin, with no allowance being made for uncertainties surrounding policy measures. If the budgets are not met, then future generations will carry the burden of meeting those targets. Of greatest concern is the plan’s reliance on the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS), which in its current form suppresses carbon prices, discourages gross emissions reductions and incentivises the planting of large areas of land in pine forests."

An article titled "Draft climate plan risks kicking costs down road," was also published in the Farmers Weekly and gives a good summary of his perspective. This quote from Simon is as usual succinct and to the point.

“There is no guarantee that the cavalry of cheap technology will come charging over the hill as is implicitly assumed by this plan.”

13)  There’s no buying our way out of the environment crisis.

The idea individuals can fix the environment by buying ‘eco-friendly’ products is dangerous. Dr Gabriela Baron explains in this Newsroom article why green consumerism is an oxymoron.

"To genuinely tackle the climate crisis, we need to focus more on cultural, behavioural, and policy changes rather than relying on technological solutions. The sooner we accept the fact that we can’t buy our way out of the situation through ‘green consumerism’, the more effective our policy strategies will be.

In the past half a century, we have been part of a significant shift from a production-focused society to one driven by consumption. Consumer culture and marketing have emerged as dominant forces, driven by consumer confidence and credit availability, rather than production efficiency.

This shift has dramatically altered personal identity and cultural development. Modern advertising has evolved from promoting a product’s practical features to creating symbolic connections between products and consumers’ psychological states, harnessing human psychology, and targeting emotions such as guilt, inadequacy, aspirations, and identity. Often, the strategy involves creating a new crisis in order to sell a product that promises to solve it."

14) An obscure climate accounting decision with billion-dollar consequences.

In June, Minister of Climate Change Simon Watts requested a report from the Climate Commission on the levels of domestic emissions reduction that Aotearoa New Zealand could feasibly achieve as part of its second nationally determined contribution (NDC2). More information is available on the Climate Commission's website.

The information below is from a statement published on the Pure Advantage website in April this year and written by Rob Morrison & Dr. Christina Hood. They say the consultation on the government's plans for domestic policy and NDC implementation is welcome but the issue they are highlighting in this statement could have big implications for NZ in the years ahead.

Here is an extract -

"In a London meeting room recently, the International Accounting Standards Board decided that corporate climate targets are not just about sustainability: they can create direct financial consequences for companies’ balance sheets

And as interpretation decisions from this Board also inform public sector accounting, it also provides guidance for how public entities, councils and countries financially account for the cost of meeting climate targets. It has potential billion-dollar consequences for the New Zealand government’s financial statements. That will be of particular interest to Climate Change Minister Hon Simon Watts, who was recently welcomed into Cabinet and also happens to be an accountant, and to Associate Climate Change and Finance Minister Hon Nicola Willis.

The decision makes two key clarifications. First, that a climate target does not have to be legally enforceable to matter: even an entirely voluntary target can create a financial obligation if the company is sufficiently committed to its delivery (that is, there can be a “constructive obligation” in accounting-speak). Second, when use of carbon credits is part of meeting a target (offsetting a company’s excess annual emissions), the cost of those credits should be financially provisioned for, as a liability, when the emissions occur each year.

These clarifications come at a helpful moment for New Zealand. There has been increasing interest in the legal and financial accounting status of New Zealand’s international emissions reductions target – or nationally determined contribution (NDC) – under the Paris Agreement that covers the 2021 to 2030 period, for example; Risks Hiding in Plain Sight by the McGuinness Institute and the related analysis by Compass Climate.

Based on the International Accounting Standards Board’s interpretation, there should be a provision (liability) in the government’s financial statements now for the portion of this cost that covers excess emissions that have already occurred. Failure to acknowledge this cost is hard to reconcile with the foundational accounting principle of presenting a “true and fair view” of the financial situation."

A recording of a discussion between Environmental Defense Society CEO Gary Taylor and CC Minister Simon Watts, that addresses some of the matters highlighted in this item, was recently made available on the EDS website. This discussion will give you a good idea of the current government's spin on these issues and contrasts somewhat with the views expressed above.

15) Climate Change Commission Delivers First National Adaptation Plan Progress Assessment.

On August 15th the Minister of Climate Change released the Commissions report, which is the first in a series of two-yearly progress assessments against the government’s national adaptation plan. The information below is from a recent media release by the Climate Commission about the report.

• This is our first-ever monitoring report gauging the progress Aotearoa New Zealand is making to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
• The report looks at the first national adaptation plan, which was released in 2022. It provides an evidence-based, impartial assessment of how effective it is and how well it is being implemented.
• The key finding of this report is that currently, adaptation is not happening on the scale, or at the pace, that is needed. The status quo is unsustainable.
• The report includes nine recommendations in total – seven focused on helping the country shift from the current reactive approach to a more proactive one and two on improving national adaptation planning and monitoring.
• These reports are due to be delivered every two years. The timing of the reports is set by the Climate Change Response Act.

Adaptation is not happening on the scale or at the pace that is needed. Aotearoa New Zealand’s first independent assessment of adaptation progress shows urgent action is needed to address the impacts of climate change on New Zealanders’ lives and livelihoods, says Commission Chair Dr Rod Carr.

The full media release is available on the Climate Commission website.

16) Commonwealth Bank stops lending to fossil fuel companies without genuine emissions plan.

This looks like a positive move by the biggest bank in Australia. You can read more about it on the ABC News website.

"The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), the country's largest mortgage lender, is the first major Australian bank to start walking away from funding fossil fuel companies without genuine emissions plans. In its latest climate report, released on the same day it posted close to $10 billion in full-year net profit, the bank stated that it had already been ditching clients not aligned with the Paris Agreement.

The real-world effects of the bank's new policy could be put to the test as soon as next week, with a major gas loan reportedly being signed off without CBA at the table. Last year, the bank announced from 2025 it would not provide loans to any coal, oil, or gas companies that did not have a transition plan in line with the Paris goals to avoid dangerous warming. This week's report shows that it is applying that policy early.

CBA's loans to fossil fuels decreased by 92 per cent from 2018 to 2022, from $4 billion to $267 million, according to analysis from Market Forces, a group that campaigns against investments in environmentally destructive projects. The bank also halved its exposure to oil and gas companies in the past two years from $3.3 billion in 2022 down to $1.7 billion."

17) Clean ups are not enough: Government policy incoherent on climate change.

The Public Health Communication Centre Aotearoa released a briefing in July where they question the direction and coherence of the current government's climate strategy. Here is the summary from the briefing -

"Events like the recent storm on the East Coast demonstrate our communities’ vulnerability in the face of climate change. But given what is known about our changing climate, it is important not to simply try to maintain or return to what was. Instead, we need the Government of Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) to use evidence to support communities to rebuild for increased resilience in the face of climate change. Additionally, we need central Government to recognise that policies that increase greenhouse gas emissions put communities in this country and internationally at increased risk from climate change impacts.

However, the current Government appears not to be making these connections, bringing in a range of policies likely to increase the country’s emissions as well as the Fast-track Approvals Bill which will reduce the rigour applied to new developments. Yet there are potentially huge public health, social, and economic benefits in an evidence-informed, coherent mitigation and adaptation policy response to climate change."

They have also made available a recent paper published in the Lancet titled "Health and climate change: adaptation policy in Aotearoa New Zealand" that describes direct and indirect health risks to NZ communities from climate change. In the paper they recommend that the Climate Change Commission engage formally and directly with health bodies to strengthen the Commission's advice on the implications of climate change, and of national climate change policies, on health and equity. They say - "Climate resilient development does not occur without better public health. For this reason, the health sector has a critical role in the development and implementation of adaptation policy."

If you're interested you can also access a copy of their submission on the Government’s Climate adaptation inquiry.

18) Rewiring Aotearoa.

I came across the Rewiring Aotearoa website recently which I thought would be worth sharing. The site is a good source of information about the environmental and economic benefits of going electric in our homes.

Rewiring Aotearoa represents everyday New Zealanders in the energy transition and is working to build an electrified future where every Kiwi saves money on energy bills, reduces their carbon emissions and has the resilience to keep their lights on and homes warm. Let’s make New Zealand more electric!

Chief scientist for Rewiring Aotearoa, Saul Griffith has written an article published in Newsroom about a high-powered report they have released which shows transforming our households, cars and home energy infrastructure to fight climate change would save New Zealanders $100 billion.

The $100 billion figure is one of two headline figures – the other is that this savings translates to the average electrified household spending between $1500 and $4700 less on energy each year. These are big numbers, but they don’t fully tell the story that Griffith has come to New Zealand to share.
New Zealand has a unique opportunity, he says, because its highly renewable power system means the climate savings of electrification are just as significant as the cash savings. Plus, our need to import most of the fossil fuels we use means decarbonisation saves even more money (and helps our trade balance). For decades, policymakers and activists have looked at climate change as a supply problem. The largest emitters – power generators who burn fossil fuels and industry – buy energy at cheaper wholesale prices, meaning solving climate change through investing in new infrastructure was going to be costly.

“If you look at the demand side of the energy economy, which is where we use energy in our cars, in our homes, in small businesses, that whole sector of the economy pays higher retail energy prices. And if you use electrification, because it is much more efficient for all those things on the demand side – and particularly if you use rooftop solar – it is now cost effective,” he says.

INTERNATIONAL

19)  Animal Telemetry.

I've recently read a very interesting book by Australian author James Bradley titled "Deep Water". In the book he provides information about the IMOS tagging project where they fix tracking devices to Elephant Seals, and use them to collect large amounts of very useful data in the Southern Ocean.

"IMOS is Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System. It is operated by a consortium of institutions as an unincorporated joint venture, with the University of Tasmania as Lead Agent. They also collect data in other areas using penguins and turtles. As the animals move through the ocean, sensors in these devices collect information about location, depth, salinity and temperature. Researcher Mark Hindell says "it's almost as if we have 287 mini-submarines exploring the Southern Ocean." Information was collected from over a million dives in more than 568,000 locations. Another researcher Prof Rob Harcourt says - "This data has improved the accuracy of the IPCC ocean state models by about 15%, which is a huge change in our understanding of how much energy is being pumped into the ocean, and has transformed the IPCC's predictions."
The ICARUS project based in Germany also uses animal telemetry on a wide range of mammals and birds. Their current device weighs only five grams but they are developing a device that will weigh only one gram and be able to be fitted to insects. Despite their miniscule size the current transmitters are equipped with a range of sensors capable of gauging speed, magnetic intensity, temperature, humidity and air pressure."

I find this sort of project fascinating. Here we are facing a predicament where human activity is having major impacts on the habitats and environment that wild animals and insects live in and the very animals being impacted are being utilised in this way to provide large amounts of data that would be incredibly difficult to collect any other way. Hopefully the information can be used to help bring about the changes necessary to ensure their survival.

"Animal Tagging deploys Satellite Relay Data Loggers (SRDL) on several species of Southern Ocean seals including both weddell and southern elephant seals. These data loggers are often equipped with a CTD and fluorometer, collecting high resolution ocean observations in the deep Southern Ocean and Antarctic waters. Data is transmitted in near real-time using the Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (Argos) system. Geolocation archival (GLS) tags have also been used in seabirds, such as the short-tailed shearwater, snow petrels and emperor penguins, however the use of these tags was ceased in 2014.    

Fitting seals with these miniaturised loggers provide the ability to collect valuable oceanographic measurements in regions often inaccessible to ship-based researchers, whilst also providing information on seal behaviour. The merging of oceanography and marine mammal ecology advances our understanding of the world’s oceans and its top predators and allow us to predict how these species will be affected by future climate changes. Furthermore, recent technological advancements permit the collection of important data on ocean properties throughout the Antarctic winter – data previously unavailable but crucially important to oceanographic and climate studies."
 
You can learn more about animal tagging on the IMOS website and also on the ICARUS website. Icarus are connected to the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour and are doing similar research working with animals. This connected project from Icarus is doing research with animals to assess the possibility of using them to provide an early warning system of natural disasters.

20)  Debt payments by countries most vulnerable to climate crisis soar.

Debt payments by the 50 countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis have doubled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and now stand at their highest level in more than three decades, campaigners have warned. The Debt Justice charity said countries at the highest risk of being affected by global heating were paying 15.5% of government revenues to external creditors – up from less than 8% before Covid-19 and 4% at their lowest recent point in 2010.

Using data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the charity said its new report showed the urgent need for comprehensive debt relief so that poor countries could invest in measures to tackle the climate crisis. “Record levels of debt are crushing the ability of the most vulnerable countries to tackle the climate emergency,” said Heidi Chow, the executive director of Debt Justice.

“We need a rapid and effective debt relief scheme to cancel debts down to a sustainable level. The UK can play its part by legislating to ensure private lenders take part in international debt relief agreements.”

Check out the full article in the Guardian.

21) The role of ‘blue carbon’ in addressing climate change.

This guest post by Dr Claire Evans, a principal biogeochemist at the National Oceanography Centre lays out the climate opportunities presented by “blue carbon” and the challenges these ecosystems face. Blue carbon is a term that refers to carbon captured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems that has potential to be conserved or enhanced. Blue carbon is stored in vegetated coastal and marine ecosystems such as seagrass, mangroves and salt marshes.

"Within the ocean’s vast expanse lie immense reservoirs of carbon – surpassing those found in either the atmosphere or the land. The ocean actively captures and incorporates carbon through various natural mechanisms, locking in a significant portion that would otherwise circulate within the Earth’s systems, thereby functioning as a continuous carbon sink.

This crucial role mitigates climate change by reducing the amount of carbon which ends up in the atmosphere. If the ocean remains as a net carbon sink, it can aid in offsetting ongoing emissions and slowing global warming. Unfortunately, a longstanding misconception persists that the ocean has an infinite resilience to human exploitation and negligence – likely stemming from the fact that the consequences of our actions are obscured beneath the surface.

Unsustainable use of the ocean’s resources – such as through overfishing – coupled with warming and acidification progressively erode the ocean’s capacity to regulate carbon and heat and its ability to sustain essential resources and services. Consequently, rates of carbon sequestration are weakening and the vast carbon reserves held within marine ecosystems are increasingly susceptible to release."


22) The critical role of ‘grounding zones’ in the retreat of Earth’s ice sheets.

This is an extract from a guest post published on the Climate Brief website from Dr Alex Bradley, an ice-ocean modeller at the British Antarctic Survey and Bryony Freer, a PhD student with the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Leeds.

"The vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica have the potential to trigger catastrophic sea level rise as the climate warms. But the ice-sheet models that scientists use to project future changes underestimate how fast sea levels are rising now and how much they have risen in the past. This suggests the models are missing important processes driving ice-sheet retreat.

New research suggests that melting at grounding zones – where the ice transitions from sitting on land to floating on water – could be the missing piece of the puzzle. And it is potentially a big piece. For example, when one study on the Thwaites glacier in west Antarctica included these processes, its projections of ice-sheet loss more than doubled. While scientists have yet to run model simulations with grounding-zone melting included for the whole of Antarctica, studies focusing on specific regions of the continent’s ice sheets project up to twice as much sea level rise.

Current global projections of sea level rise also do not include grounding-zone melting. This means that these projections – including those that inform the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – may be substantial underestimates.Ice-sheet models have “known unknowns” – things we know that we do not know perfectly, but can account for imperfect knowledge of. However, they also have “unknown unknowns” – things that we do not even know are happening and therefore cannot quantify the full effects of.

Although grounding-zone melting might result in higher sea level than we expected, at least we now know that it is happening and can begin to incorporate it into our models. The devil we know is better than the devil we don’t."

23) The Battery Mineral Loop - The path from extraction to circularity.

I've included items in earlier newsletters questioning whether our aim to replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy will be limited by the availability of enough resources, in particular critical minerals. A report from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in the US takes an optimistic perspective on the issue regarding storage batteries and argues that a circular system can be established that will meet our needs. In my opinion there is still a big question of whether we can continue to produce enough energy and minerals to meet the exponentially growing demands of our technological world while at the same time turning around the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. If the wish is to keep charging headlong into this brave new world, rather than slowing down and exercising some restraint and discrimination, I think it would be wise to remember Papatuanuku will have the last word.

Here is an extract from the RMI website -

In The Battery Mineral Loop, RMI lays out a comprehensive strategy to address the rising demand for battery minerals. Battery minerals are not the new oil. Even as battery demand surges, the combined forces of efficiency, innovation, and circularity will drive peak demand for mined minerals within a decade — and may even avoid mineral extraction altogether by 2050. These advancements enable us to transition from linear extraction to a circular loop, with compounding benefits for our climate, security, equity, health, and wealth.

Change is already underway. Without the past decade of improvements in chemistry mix, energy density, and recycling, lithium, nickel, and cobalt demand would be 60–140 percent higher than they are today. Continuing the current trend means we will see peak virgin battery mineral demand in the mid-2030s.

Accelerating the trend along six key solutions — deploying new battery chemistries, making batteries more energy-dense, recycling their mineral content, extending their lifetime, improving vehicle efficiency, and improving mobility efficiency — means we can reach net-zero mineral demand in the 2040s.

At that point, end-of-life batteries will become the new mineral ore, limiting the need for any mining altogether. We have enough to get there; our known reserves of lithium, cobalt, and nickel are twice the level of total virgin demand we may require, and announced mining projects are already sufficient to meet almost all virgin demand.

Check out the full article and get access to the full report on the RMI website. This article on the EV Markets Reports website supports the RMI report conclusions.

24)  Governing for the planet - Nation-states are no longer fit for purpose to create a habitable future for humans and nature. Which political system is?

Below is an extract from an essay published on the Aeon website. I'm always interested in viewpoints that step back from the specifics of the polycrisis and look deeper into the big picture aspect of what is happening on our planet. This item and the next four, the first on multipolar traps, then two short essays from Martin LeFevre and finally an item about the book "A Darwinian Survival Guide" all give plenty of food for thought and discussion about human beings and their part in the biosphere. 

In politics, there is no ‘world’; only states. Compounding the problem is the fact that for pathogens, there are no ‘states’; there is only the world.

This basic mismatch between the scale of the problem and the scale of possible solutions is a source of many of today’s failures of global governance. Nation-states and the global governance institutions they have formed simply aren’t fit for the task of managing things such as viruses, greenhouse gases and biodiversity, which aren’t bound by political borders, but only by the Earth system. As a result, the diplomats may still come to agree on a pandemic treaty – they’ve committed to keep working – but, so long as the structure of the international system continues to treat sovereignty as sacrosanct, they will never be able to effectively govern this or other planetary-scale phenomena.

An emerging scientific consensus, however, makes clear that not only have we not tamed nature, we can’t tame nature, for the simple reason that we are part of nature. Human beings are inextricably part of the biosphere, part of Earth. These insights emerge from rigorous scientific study, not mystical reflection, and reveal our place within the biogeochemical churn of this planet. A vast and expanding infrastructure of sensors across, above and below Earth, and the networks of software and hardware that process and interpret the mountains of data the sensors produce, have demonstrated, with an accuracy and precision unmatched by previous generations, that humans are embedded in this planet’s system of systems.

What this new and growing planetary sapience is revealing is systematic wreckage. Scientists have determined that human actions (really, some humans’ actions) have pushed Earth past the ‘safe operating space for humanity’ for six of nine ‘planetary boundaries’, including climate change, biosphere integrity and freshwater change. We now understand not only the damage that we are doing to planetary systems but the damage that we are doing to ourselves as elements of those systems. The Earth sustains us, not the other way around. There is no possibility of human thriving unless the ecosystems that we are part of thrive.
The realisation of our planetary condition may insult our narcissistic self-regard, but it also yields a positive possibility: that human flourishing is possible only in the context of multispecies flourishing on a habitable planet. The aim of habitability is meant to diverge from the now-dominant concept of sustainability. While the concept of sustainability treats nature both as distinct from humans and as existing for humans’ responsibly managed instrumental use, the concept of habitability understands humans as embedded in and reliant on the more-than-human natural world. Stripped of sustainability’s anthropocentrism, habitability focuses on fostering the conditions that allow complex life in general – including, but not only, humans – to live well. This vision of multispecies flourishing is at once generous and selfish. Expanding the circle of concern to include the multispecies menagerie is certainly more beneficent than current politics typically allows, but it is also absolutely about ensuring the survival of our species. What’s bad for them is, ultimately, bad for us. These goals – thriving ecosystems in a stable biosphere supporting human lives and nonhuman life – must be our new lodestar.

The central question of our time is: how can we achieve this?

We can’t predict what the galvanising catastrophe might be that brings about new systems of governance. We must focus our efforts instead on defining a clear perspective on what planetary governance could and should be. Holding such a vision in our minds may make it more possible to take advantage of the crisis that will all but inevitably arrive given the inadequacy of the current system. As we enter a period of not just geopolitical but geophysical uncertainty, calibrating our North Star – our vision of where we want to head – will be more important than ever.

Check out the full essay on the Aeon website.

25) Multipolar or Moloch traps.

This is a term I've become aware of recently. Learning about multipolar traps was helpful for me in my efforts to try and understand what it is that drives humanity to keep messing it's own bed.

"The multipolar trap is a term used to describe a situation where self-interest compels multiple parties to act against their collective interest, leading to detrimental outcomes or even destruction."
 
AND - "Escaping from the immensely challenging nature of multipolar traps poses a significant obstacle. It necessitates collective efforts and consideration of the long-term consequences of our actions. To achieve this, industries, governments, individuals, and society as a whole must engage in intensive collaboration to overcome competitive barriers and prioritize long-term sustainability over short-term gains."

You can learn more about this concept from this extract from an online book by David Gurteen called Conversational Leadership.

For anyone interested in this topic there is also a deep dive discussion about this and related topics between Nate Hagens and Daniel Schmachtenberger  on YouTube. The topic of the discussion is "A Vision for Betterment - From Naive to Authentic Progress."

"Current mainstream narratives sell the story that progress is synonymous with betterment, and that the world becomes better for everyone as GDP and economies continue to grow. Yet, this is an incomplete portrayal that leaves out the dark sides of advancement. What are the implications when only the victors of history write the narratives of progress and define societal values? What are the value systems embedded in our institutions and policies, and how do they reinforce the need for ongoing growth at the expense of the natural world and human well-being? Finally, how do we change these dynamics to form a new, holistic definition of progress that accounts for the connectedness of our planet to the health of our minds, bodies, and communities?"

26) A Day Of Contrasts Between Darkness And Light.

Below is an extract from an Opinion item written by Martin LeFevre and published on the Scoop website. I recommend checking out the full text.

"Thousands of years of civilization, and tens of thousands of years of prehistory have culminated in planetary polycrisis. Is there a root cause, and can it be addressed, much less redressed by the living generations? It can if we look below the surface level of current events and national politics, and stop confusing human social and political systems with the natural order. Conflating man-made systems with natural systems only exacerbates man’s decimation of the earth, and does nothing to remedy humankind’s increasing social and psychological pathology. The latter – the human mind and consciousness – is what is destroying the former -- the natural order. Combining them by saying things like, “How rising emissions distort our political ecosystems is not nearly as well understood as the scientific certainty that they are heating our world,” just increases confusion.

It’s true that we need to examine “the feedbacks of the climate crisis on governance.” But if we have no insight into the underlying cause of the fragmentation razing both the earth and human institutions, we cannot deal with either. Placing the climate and ecological crisis in the context of national and international politics, or even politics at all, is to be shortsighted to the point of obtuse. We have to look a lot deeper than “the battle between those who want to fix what is broken and those who want to keep breaking."

27) The Pervasiveness Of Inward Deadness Is Not The Result Of “The Deadening Effect Of The Super-Rich”.

Here is another essay from Martin challenging our perceptions of our predicament.

It’s easy to blame the rich and “the soul-sucking mode of exploitation we call capitalism” for the rapaciousness of the human species. However, “restraining the power of the very rich” is an absurdly inadequate response to the global polycrisis.

Of course the super-rich have added greatly to the hellishness of this world. But it’s facile to maintain they are the cause of the planetary ecological, economic and political crisis, and that constraining them is the remedy to it.
We, those who still care about the viability of the earth and the future of humanity, have to look deeper than boilerplate thinking on the left. That means continuously questioning and observing within, not automatically looking for external remedies.

When we awaken insight and intelligence inwardly, we not only feel wonder and transcendence as human beings, but will find creative outward solutions to the polycrisis that aren’t based on accumulating power.

28) A Darwinian Survival Guide - Hope for the 21st Century.

The final item is about a book I've recently read titled "A Darwinian Survival Guide - Hope for the 21st Century" by Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta. Some of you may remember the discussion I included in the May newsletter between Daniel, an evolutionary biologist and a science fiction writer called Peter Watts. I've included below a short extract from and a description of the book. I was able to borrow the book from the Blenheim library so if you're interested you could check it out.

For those who don't want to read the book, I recommend reading the excellent short research paper titled "Surviving the Anthropocene: A Darwinian Guide" which is a precis of the book. Daniel and Salvatore have made it available on the ResearchGate website and reading it might be a good opportunity to have some of our views of the world we live in, challenged!

Here is an extract from the precis of the book -

"The fundamental theory of the survival of life on this planet is Darwinism. Darwinian evolution is about coping with change by changing, using what you have on hand to survive. The fuel for this process is evolutionary potential, which resides in preexisting variation. This preexisting variation allows living systems to move forward into an uncertain future. The biosphere is a complex evolutionary system that generates, stores, and uses its own potential to survive. This makes ecosystems robust, not fragile. That suggests we can use the biosphere without destroying it, but we need some guidelines. Those guidelines are embodied in the Four Laws of Biotics, which tell us how we can interact with the biosphere without endangering ourselves further.

We can further improve humanity’s chances of survival as a technological species by:

1. Implementing the economics of well-being,
2. Reducing population density by finding space in rural areas and revitalizing them into circularized economies,
3. Regrowing sustainably by creating networks of cooperating circular economies, adding new modules when growth occurs, not consolidating into new densely populated and vulnerable urban centers, and
4. Modifying social institutions to be responsive to the desires of the grassroots, even when those desires do not produce the expected outcomes.

Darwinian principles provide humanity with a middle ground, a third way, between unattainable utopia and unacceptable apocalypse. We can alter our behavior now according to Darwinian principles, at great expense and difficulty, and extend or even improve upon the current state of the Anthropocene, or we can fail to act on our own behalf, experience a general collapse of technological society, and rebuild using those Darwinian principles to provide a more survivable future."

Here is an extract from the book -

"What makes the biosphere robust is not evolution's propensity to maximise fitness but rather its propensity to generate less than maximally fit yet survivable variants (survival of the fit) and a realm of possibilities (sloppy fitness space) to explore. These insights have been around for more than 160 years since Darwin published the "Origin of Species." And yet our modern world has been saturated with a survival-of-the-fittest mentality, which despite what many may think, is the antithesis of how nature works. Our economic systems as well as the ways we interact with each other and the rest of the biosphere are driven by such mantras as "bigger is better" and "growth is good." Darwin understood that growth is a fundamental aspect of biology, but growth alone only produces conflict. Growing as much as possible amounts to maximising short-term profits at the expense of saving for the future. And this is a poor strategy when survival depends on coping with change."

Here is a description of the book from the MIT website -

"How humanity brought about the climate crisis by departing from its evolutionary trajectory 15,000 years ago—and how we can use evolutionary principles to save ourselves from the worst outcomes.

Despite efforts to sustain civilization, humanity faces existential threats from overpopulation, globalized trade and travel, urbanization, and global climate change. In A Darwinian Survival Guide, Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta offer a novel—and hopeful—perspective on how to meet these tremendous challenges by changing the discourse from sustainability to survival. Darwinian evolution, the world's only theory of survival, is the means by which the biosphere has persisted and renewed itself following past environmental perturbations, and it has never failed, they explain. Even in the aftermath of mass extinctions, enough survivors remain with the potential to produce a new diversified biosphere. Drawing on their expertise as field biologists, Brooks and Agosta trace the evolutionary path from the early days of humans through the Late Pleistocene and the beginning of the Anthropocene all the way to the Great Acceleration of technological humanity around 1950, demonstrating how our creative capacities have allowed humanity to survive. However, constant conflict without resolution has made the Anthropocene not only unsustainable, but unsurvivable. Guided by the four laws of biotics, the authors explain how humanity should interact with the rest of the biosphere and with each other in accordance with Darwinian principles. They reveal a middle ground between apocalypse and utopia, with two options: alter our behavior now at great expense and extend civilization or fail to act and rebuild in accordance with those same principles. If we take the latter, then our immediate goal ought to focus on preserving as many of humanity's positive achievements—from high technology to high art—as possible to shorten the time needed to rebuild."

LOCAL

1) Media articles written by CKM member Tom Powell since the last newsletter.

01/03/2024 - Do we really need to fly?
29/03/2024 - Where does the plastic go?
27/04/2024 - We need to stick together.
25/05/2024 - Temporary rates rises? Don't count on it. 

2) The big dry shuts off Wairau River water takes.

This article from Maia Hart published in the Marlborough Express in March reported on discussion at the MDC March Environment and Planning Committee meeting.

I attended the meeting and have put together some comments, which I've added here for those interested in the ongoing situation with the declining Wairau aquifer and the latest update from the Gravel Bed Rivers research team.

Important points to note -

• Wairau Aquifer levels in March were the lowest ever observed by MDC. The indicator monitoring bore at Conders Bend was the lowest ever recorded, as were other bores. Spring recession was significant at all the springs. There will be a public consultation happening later this year to help determine what the community feel is acceptable regarding the health of the springs. Peter Davidson (groundwater scientist) informed me that if the aquifer decline continued and the spring recession was to be minimised that  would eventually mean cutoffs for all 1000 Wairau aquifer water users every year. Fortunately Peter is confident the declining trend can be halted. I hope he is right!
• This reference in the report to the Committee is relevant - "the long-term declining trend is caused by falling Wairau River channel bed levels relative to the most permeable Wairau Aquifer layers." It was reported that a build up of sediment in the river bed of about 0.5m would be needed to slow or halt the declining trend. This will require reduced gravel extraction from certain areas and time for sediments to migrate down the river from higher up.

There are long term factors exacerbating this process.

• Wilding pine infestations particularly in tributaries such as the Branch. Trees were originally planted many decades ago to stabilise large areas of scree. We now know those same scree slopes provided important flows of sediment into the Wairau catchment.
• Land use change on the north bank from historic pastoral farming to plantation forestry has reduced sediment flows.
• The building of the Waihopai Dam in the 1930's greatly reduced sediment flows coming down the Waihopai River.

This document from Peter provides a good summary of the current situation.

An update was also published by MDC on May 3rd. It is a good summary of the situation as it now stands.
                                         You can read the full statement on their website.

3) MDC Long Term Plan consultation -

Consultation on the 2024-34 Long Term Plan closed on May 13th. CKM contributed a submission focusing on the big picture view as we see it, which you can download and read if interested.

Here are a couple of extracts from our submission -

INFRASTRUCTURE STRATEGY –

We know the Plan is for the next ten year period but we note that in the Infrastructure Strategy you project expenditure for the next 30 years (page 54). Rather than attempting to project expenditure for 3 decades, which we believe is an impossible and pointless task, we propose the following –

• Focus resources into anticipating what we might expect in terms of environmental and climatic impacts and disruptions over the next three decades. We believe this would be of much more value to our community that attempting to project infrastructure spending.

We don’t need to remind you that there have been, and will no doubt continue to be, multiple warnings issued by bodies such as the UN, International Energy Agency, international and national environmental NGO’s, climate and environmental scientists etc regarding the major challenges and disruptions we will all have to face together in the decades ahead.

AND

We believe the overwhelming factors impacting the future of Marlborough and our planet as a whole will be environmental and climatic and it appears that the weighting of these factors in the graphs in the LTP document (pg 54) have been excluded or at the least minimalised. Why would we project infrastructure expenditure for 3 decades with the apparent assumption that life will continue as usual and that disasters such as the 2021 and 2022 extreme rainfall events were somehow unusual. It seems to us heroic or maybe wishful thinking to be projecting spending in the 2030’s to be trending downwards from the relative highs of the next five years. Likewise projecting five yearly expenditures from 2029 – 2054 as being less than the next 5 year period fascinates us. Is no one listening to the warnings of what we are to expect in the decades ahead? All those warnings tell us to expect more extreme events and that the time of living in a relatively benign climate has now passed. We do not comprehend how anyone can make financial projections about the next 10 years, let alone 30 years, without at least acknowledging the impacts of further disruptive events.

4) Marlborough to host first all-electric flights -

The country’s first commercial electric plane will fly a Wellington-Marlborough cargo route for mail and parcels, Air New Zealand says.
The cargo-only commercial demonstrator flights, carrying mail for NZ Post, will be up and running in 2026, using the Beta Alia plane ordered by Air New Zealand late last year. At the time they were ordered Air New Zealand hoped electric planes would be carrying passengers in the next decade.

A key element of the deal to acquire smaller aircraft was to get Air New Zealand to the top of the list for more commercially viable passenger aircraft, where it was hoping to replace the 50-seater Q300 regional planes.

You can check out the full article on Stuff and this media release on the MDC website.

5) The family that diverts 1000 tonnes of waste a year.

Motueka couple Merv Hall and Ricarda Scherschel divert 1000 tonnes of waste a year from landfill, an impressive feat for a small business with only four full time equivalent employees. But they are not set at stopping there, and say with funding, they could help reduce Tasman’s waste by 10%. Hall and Scherschel took over Motueka’s Weka Peckers in 2020. The decision, Hall said, was “a bit of Covid thing”. The pair had been traveling back and forth between Scherschel’s native Germany, but with two young children, decided they needed a base.

Passionate about environmental issues, when the business came up for sale, they grabbed it. Since then, it’s grown from a reuse shop to a larger focus on waste diversion areas - including the tricky pieces of recycling that kerbside bins won’t accept.

Check out the full article in Stuff.

NATIONAL

6) Recloaking Papatūānuku -

Pure Advantage have made an impressive infographic available on their website outlining their vision for recloaking Papatūānuku. This is a very positive and uplifting initiative that aims to strategically reforest and restore two million hectares of indigenous forest in Aotearoa. The infographic is available to view and download from their website where they make the following statement.

The Recloaking Papatūānuku infographic highlights the What, Why, How, When, Where and Who of the initiative. It shows that together, we have the tools to weave climate and ecological resilience into our whenua, and invest in the future economic and social prosperity of our country. Pure Advantage is built on a commitment to communicate professional climate and business aligned thought leadership, including support for the Ō Tātou Ngahere programme of work with Tāne’s Tree Trust and increasingly Recloaking Papatūānuku. With all the cuts and changes going on in the science community it is more important than ever for us to keep engaging with professional thought leaders and help to promote their views on the urgency and opportunities for New Zealand to respond to the challenges and opportunities we face with climate change and environment.

7) Fast-track bill could affect NZ's reputation - Transparency International.

Transparency International which campaigns against corruption worldwide has expressed some valid concerns about the proposed "Fast Track" legislation. This article and short interview on the RNZ website gives more info.

Resources Minister Shane Jones has reportedly asked officials for advice on whether oil and gas companies could be offered “bonds” as compensation if drilling rights offered by the present government were extinguished by any future administration. Such a move would have real implications under the government’s proposed Fast-track Approvals Bill, which is designed to “enable faster approval of infrastructure and other projects that have significant regional or national benefits”.

Transparency International says the fast-tracking consent bill could taint New Zealand's international reputation. In March, the government unveiled a plan to fast-track infrastructure projects, giving just three ministers the power to greenlight significant projects. The bill, which is before a select committee, has been criticised for potentially exposing the ministers to corruption allegations. Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton said the role of ministers as decision-makers should be scrapped. And the auditor-general had urged that the bill included requirements for better managing conflicts of interest. Transparency International believed public perception around the fast-track bill might be improved by a sunset clause, "so that it doesn't just go on and on" and said the scope was currently "very broad", not just involving the Resource Management Act.

"The bill seems to have exclusion clause for the OIA [Official Information Act] so it's not clear whether people will be able to seek information and gain it, and then there are the legal challenge rights which seem to be curtailed as well." There could be economic consequences if New Zealand's international reputation were to drop further, Haggie said. "The problem is we rely on our international reputation hugely in terms of our trading status... our mana internationally at trading tables, and generally as a good government citizen of the world...

"That's really important for New Zealand to hold its head up high and be able to say its systems are clean, it's a good democracy, it's a safe place... it's running a good, fair system for doing business, and for its people in terms of participation."

On the same theme this article from Jane Kelsey in The Conversation looks at the possible exposure of future NZ governments to expensive trade disputes.

Last year, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment warned that governments could be liable to oil and gas corporations for US$340 billion in future disputes over fulfilling their commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change. This is a major disincentive to ambitious climate action. States that once championed agreements containing ISDS are now withdrawing from them. This year, the European Commission proposed a coordinated EU withdrawal from the multilateral Energy Charter Treaty because energy companies are using ISDS to challenge new climate change laws and policies.
The New Zealand parliament began to step back from ISDS in 2015, when NZ First MP Fletcher Tabuteau sponsored a private member’s bill “to protect New Zealand laws by prohibiting New Zealand from entering international agreements that include provision for investor-state dispute settlement”.

And finally this article looks at potential impacts on NZ’s biodiversity.

....the proposed fast-tracking process leaves no time for thorough ecological surveys to assess a site’s biological diversity. It restricts consenting to just six months, which means expert panels would have to make their assessments based only on existing ecological information – known as a “desktop assessment”. None of the recent and proposed changes to environmental legislation are responsive to the dual biodiversity and climate crises. They are also inconsistent with the government’s own stated goal of evidence-based decision making. The fast-tracking agenda threatens to undermine New Zealand’s progress on biodiversity protection and other key environmental issues. It erodes rather than sustains the natural capital on which the economy depends. “These are not a replacement for on-the-ground surveys, particularly in New Zealand, where we have limited data on many species and for many parts of the country,” the authors write.

8) ELI has successfully overturned the granting of a nitrogen discharge consent to a major irrigation scheme.

We all need to be thankful for the legal work that groups such as ELI (Environmental Law Initiative) do on behalf of Papatūānuku. This was an important legal challenge that may not have happened at all without ELI's efforts.

The High Court has found that Environment Canterbury (ECan) unlawfully granted a resource consent for the discharge of nitrogen and other contaminants to Ashburton Lyndhurst Irrigation Ltd (ALIL). In a High Court judgment delivered on Wednesday 20 March, Justice Mander found that the decision to grant the discharge consent breached the statutory bar to consenting discharges likely to cause significant effects on aquatic life:

"On the Commissioner's own findings, it appears indisputable there will likely be continuing significant adverse effects on aquatic life for the time being. I do not consider the grant of a discharge consent on the basis of the conditions imposed, albeit in anticipation that over time there will be a reduction in nitrogen leaching loads and some mitigation of the adverse effects that are likely to continue from the current activity, avoids breaching the s107(1) prohibition.” Based on this finding the judge found that the decision to grant the resource consent was based on a material error of law.

ELI’s Director of Research and Legal, Matt Hall said: "This ruling is hugely significant for freshwater management, both in Canterbury and around Aotearoa New Zealand. The Court has upheld the clear prohibition on the granting of discharge consents that are likely to have significant adverse effects on aquatic life. The Court has also made it clear that where upstream discharges end up causing problems in the coastal environment, the relevant coastal policies apply."

You can read more about the case on the ELI website and also access the full judgement if you are interested.

9) European court rules human rights violated by climate inaction.

This appears to be a bit of landmark court case because "It comprehensively dismisses the argument that courts cannot rule on climate legal obligations because climate change is a global phenomenon or because action by one state is just a 'drop in the ocean'," This could have implications for the case taken by Mike Smith, which I included in the last newsletter.

The court ruled that Switzerland had "failed to comply with its duties under the Convention concerning climate change" and that it had violated the right to respect for private and family life. It also found that "there had been critical gaps" in the country's policies to tackle climate change including failing to quantify reductions in greenhouse gases - those gases that warm Earth's atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas.

Check out the full article on the TVNZ website.

This article on The Conversation website includes discussion about the possible implications of the Swiss case for the litigation that Mike Smith is taking here in NZ where he "....has sued the New Zealand government, claiming (among other things) that its inadequate emissions reductions framework breaches the rights to life and to practise culture under the Bill of Rights."

10) Ecosystems are deeply interconnected – environmental research, policy and management should be too.

Below is an extract from an article in The Conversation authored by Rebecca Gladstone-Gallagher, Conrad Pilditch and Simon Francis Thrush.

Why are we crossing ecological boundaries that affect Earth’s fundamental life-supporting capacity? Is it because we don’t have enough information about how ecosystems respond to change? Or are we unable, even unwilling, to use that information better? We have a lot to learn still, but as we show in our research, using current ecological knowledge more effectively could deliver substantial environmental gains.
Our work focuses on improving links between research and ecosystem management to identify key trigger points for action in a framework that joins land, freshwater and sea ecosystems. Specifically, we investigate solutions to environmental and societal problems that stem from the disparities between scientific research, policy and management responses to environmental issues. We need managers and policy makers to consider ecological tipping points and how they can cascade though ecosystems from land into rivers and lakes and, ultimately, the ocean.

Cyclones as a real-world example - As a result of massive soil erosion on the east coast of the North Island during Cyclone Bola in 1988, steep hillsides were retired from grazing and converted to pine plantations to help stabilise the land. Fast forward three decades and a large proportion of the forest reached harvest at the same time. The exposed soil associated with clear felling was left draped in woody debris to protect it from rain. However, Cyclone Gabrielle hit in February last year, with extreme rainfall washing both soil and woody debris into streams. This destroyed habitats, transported vast amounts of silt and wrecked lowland farms, orchards and critical infrastructure. The debris also clogged harbours and coastal beaches, smothered seafloor habitats, destroyed fisheries and affected cultural and recreational values. This real-world example demonstrates the severe consequences of lags in information flow and management responses. If land-use management decisions had considered the effects on other connected ecosystems and the potential for climate change to intensify those connections, the outcomes could have been different. We could have implemented more diverse strategies in land use and put emphasis on restoring native forest and coastal wetlands.

INTERNATIONAL

11) Granting legal ‘personhood’ to nature is a growing movement – can it stem biodiversity loss?

This article written by Viktoria Kahui and published in The Conversation highlights the importance of giving attention to legally defining who has liability in situations where natural objects are given legal personhood.

Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on giving legal rights to nature.
Many Indigenous peoples have long emphasised the intrinsic value of nature. In 1972, the late University of Southern California law professor Christopher Stone proposed what then seemed like a whimsical idea: to vest legal rights in natural objects to allow a shift from an anthropocentric to an intrinsic worldview. Ecuador was the first country to enshrine rights of nature in its 2008 constitution. Since then, a growing number of countries have followed in awarding rights of nature. This includes Aotearoa New Zealand, where legal personhood was granted to the Whanganui River, the former national park Te Urewera and soon the Taranaki maunga.

At its core, the rights-of-nature movement allows persons to take legal action on behalf of natural ecosystems, as opposed to on behalf of people affected by environmental degradation. Ecosystems can become separate entities with their own agency, in the same way other non-human entities such as charitable trusts and organisations can exist as separate entities in law.

Liability matters - The recent overturning of two rights-of-nature decisions in particular puts the spot light on the importance of liability. In the US, farming operations challenged the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in 2020, which granted Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish and naturally evolve”. Farmers argued the bill was too vague and would expose them to liability from fertiliser runoff. In India, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers were granted living-person status, where injury to rivers was to be treated equally to injury to human beings. The decision was challenged on the grounds of uncertainty about who the custodians are and who would be liable to pay damage to the families of those who drowned in the rivers.

Both these were legally overturned, meaning these natural entities no longer have rights of nature. This suggests attention to legally defining who has liability for what may be an important building block for the movement to protect biodiversity in the future.
Our recommendation is that future rights-of-nature frameworks need to have well-defined legal rights and include appointed guardians, established as separate legal entities with limited liability, as well as the support of representatives from interest groups.

12) Climate change from a wild animal's point of view: Adam Welz -

I highly recommend this interview with Adam Welz, aired on RNZ on May 11th. In the interview Adam talks about his recent book titled "The End of Eden - Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown". Adam helps us to view our existence as a part of the greater miracle of life and emphasises how important it is to respect the right of all other lifeforms to coexist with us. I have tried hard to foster this in myself for many years against the constant pressure to consume more and to place our wants before the planet's needs. Are we able to change our mindset and behaviour and ensure we continue to play a part in this amazing cosmic play along with all the other lifeforms that have co-evolved with us? I live in hope that we can.

13) The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt? An evolutionary biologist and a science fiction writer walk into a bar... and mull over survival.

Following on from the previous item here is a couple of extracts from a discussion between science fiction writer Peter Watts and evolutionary biologist Daniel Brooks. They discuss the book recently published by Daniel and his co-author Salvatore Agosta titled "A Darwinian Survival Guide - Hope for the Twenty First Century". You can read the full discussion on the MIT Press Reader website. It is fascinating and provides plenty of food for thought for those who, like me, might be "mulling over our survival".

"....we should not be talking about sustainability, but about survival, in terms of humanity’s future. Sustainability has come to mean, what kind of technological fixes can we come up with that will allow us to continue to do business as usual without paying a penalty for it? As evolutionary biologists, we understand that all actions carry biological consequences. We know that relying on indefinite growth or uncontrolled growth is unsustainable in the long term, but that’s the behavior we’re seeing now. Stepping back a bit. Darwin told us in 1859 that what we had been doing for the last 10,000 or so years was not going to work. But people didn’t want to hear that message. So along came a sociologist who said, “It’s OK; I can fix Darwinism.” This guy’s name was Herbert Spencer, and he said, “I can fix Darwinism. We’ll just call it natural selection, but instead of survival of what’s-good-enough-to-survive-in-the-future, we’re going to call it survival of the fittest, and it’s whatever is best now.” Herbert Spencer was instrumental in convincing most biologists to change their perspective from “evolution is long-term survival” to “evolution is short-term adaptation.” And that was consistent with the notion of maximizing short term profits economically, maximizing your chances of being reelected, maximizing the collection plate every Sunday in the churches, and people were quite happy with this."

AND

"Everything that people did at any point in time seemed like a good idea at the time; it seemed to solve a problem. If it worked for a while, that was fine, and when it no longer worked, they tried to do something else. But now we seem to be at a point where our ability to survive in the short term is compromised, and what we’re saying is that our way to survive better in the short term, ironically, is now based on a better understanding of how to survive in the long run. We’re hoping that people will begin seriously thinking that our short-term well-being is best served by thinking about our long-term survival."

14) Post Carbon Institute.

I've also recently come across the website of the "Post Carbon Institute", which has a view of our predicament with strong similarities to those espoused in the discussion in the previous item. So if you found the discussion between Peter and Daniel thought provoking then I recommend checking out the Post Carbon Institute website where they say -

• Our Mission - Founded in 2003, Post Carbon Institute’s mission is to lead the transition to a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable world by providing individuals and communities with the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated ecological, economic, energy, and equity crises of the 21st century.
• Our Vision - We envision a world where resilient, just, and sustainable communities coexist with nature, thrive within ecological bounds, and provide greater protection for both human and non-human lives.
• The Issues We Address - Humanity is experiencing a dangerous confluence of crises in interrelated environmental and social systems—a ‘polycrisis’ that threatens the underpinnings of modern civilization.

Post Carbon Institute believes that the best way to confront this challenge is to build awareness of (a) the polycrisis, its drivers, and its trajectory, and (b) community resilience-building as an ideal response. Our specific areas of focus are:

• The Big Picture - The interrelated crises of the 21st century can’t be solved with simple technical adjustments. Understanding and responding to them intelligently requires us to think in terms of systems.
• The Great Unraveling - Humanity is entering the Great Unraveling—a time which individual impacts are compounding to threaten the very environmental and social systems that support modern human civilization.
• Community Resilience - A resilient community is one that can maintain its essential identity while adapting to change. Building community resilience is a critical response to the sustainability crises of the 21st century.
• The Energy Transition - We can no longer ignore the ever-rising financial, social, and environmental costs of fossil fuels; nor can we ignore questions about what a truly renewable energy future will look like.
• Limits to Growth - The sustainability challenges humanity faces are interrelated facets of one essential truth: the planet can not support ever-more economic growth and resource consumption.

15) Honey, I shrunk my life - Taking “degrowth” seriously.

Finally on the topic of our future survival, here is a long read from Harry Flood for anyone who is wanting more on the theme of survival and the predicament in front of us.

Here are a couple of extracts to give you some flavour -

Of all the problems facing humanity, there’s arguably only one that really matters: how do we achieve carbon-neutrality quickly enough to save our bacon? People who haven’t just flat f...ing given up mostly count themselves as tech optimists; they believe we can science our way out of this mess – by pivoting to renewable energy, and tweaking our consumer behavior in the ways that matter most. But more and more people whose opinions count say such measures are doomed to fail. They amount to tapping the brakes, when there’s just not enough runway left for that. We need to slam on the emergency brake, as the Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito puts it – to avert environmental and social catastrophe. We’re talking about a major, really unprecedented paradigm shift. Which exposes the question under the question: Can it even be done? Is material growth inevitable? Or is it, as Wendell Berry once put it, “evitable”?

AND

The Franciscan monk Richard Rohr has some thoughts about a life well lived. You spend the first half of it acquiring things, and the second half giving them away. And the new space you have in the container, having got rid of your stuff, you fill with other people. If such an idea scales, we might come to think of the last century of escalating consumerism as the first half of life; it was all about acquiring power, consolidating our career, etc. And now we’re entering the second part ... a move from “I” to “we.” From building to sharing. From an ethic of power to an ethic of care.
You have to take an idea like that seriously.
Because the alternative is living with the dis-integration of our very souls.

16) Singing to protect nature's harmony!

The Stop Ecocide team in Finland recently coordinated a 3 day program of press interviews and meetings with diplomats, politicians and eminent experts from various fields. This culminated with an amazing choral mega-concert. The "Choirs for Ecocide Law" concert was a wonderfully positive event. Lesley and I have listened to it and found it uplifting and inspiring. I love the idea of moving people's minds by moving their hearts. What a great initiative to support the cause of establishing Ecocide as a crime under international law.

3 packed days concluded with the extraordinary Choirs for Ecocide Law mega-concert on 27th April at the Helsinki Music Hall - 1000 singers and a completely sold-out auditorium! A recording of the entire glorious occasion, including the full concert and panel discussion is available on YouTube. Singing about something is a very powerful thing - especially with others. Research from the pilot Choirs for Ecocide Law project last year showed that 90% of those learning the songs said their worldview shifted… let's sing ecocide law into place!

Choirs for Ecocide Law is an artistic choral project, whose main purpose is to spread awareness about the need to make large-scale environmental destruction (ecocide) an international crime. Choirs for Ecocide Law provides a sixty minute concert program, “Let us change the rules!”, ready to be rehearsed and performed by your choir – for free. The scores package includes music made by composers from different cultures, along with guidelines for an interactive rehearsal process, and with a script for bringing the concert storyline to stage.

17) Sail-powered cargo ship 'shows potential of wind'
 
Retrofitting giant, rigid sails to a cargo ship has effectively cut its fuel use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, shipping firm data shows.
The Pyxis Ocean tested the British-designed WindWings for six months. Cargill says the data "underscores the potential" of wind to reduce the shipping industry's carbon footprint. Experts describe the results as "very encouraging", but say, at present, only a tiny volume of the international shipping fleet is using the technology. Sails have powered boats for millennia - but the type of sails trialled on the Pyxis Ocean are different to those normally seen on wind-powered vessels. Made of the same material as wind turbine blades, they are folded down in port then opened out to stand at 123ft (37.5m) on the open seas.

Check out the full article on the BBC website.

18) Taxing big fossil fuel firms ‘could raise $900bn in climate finance by 2030’.

A new tax on fossil fuel companies based in the world’s richest countries could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to help the most vulnerable nations cope with the escalating climate crisis, according to a report. The Climate Damages Tax report, published on April 29th, calculates that an additional tax on fossil fuel majors based in the wealthiest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries could raise $720bn (£580bn) by the end of the decade.

The authors say a new extraction levy could boost the loss and damage fund to help vulnerable countries cope with the worst effects of climate breakdown that was agreed at the Cop28 summit in Dubai – a hard-won victory by developing countries that they hope will signal a commitment by developed, polluting nations to provide financial support for some of the destruction already under way.

Check out the full article in The Guardian.

19) Updates from James Hansen.

For those who wish to keep up with the latest science observations from James and his team here are updates.

Global Warming Acceleration: Hope vs Hopium

Accumulating evidence supports the interpretation in our Pipeline paper: decreasing human-made aerosols increased Earth’s energy imbalance and accelerated global warming in the past decade. Climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing, physically independent quantities, were tied together by United Nations IPCC climate assessments that rely excessively on global climate models (GCMs) and fail to measure climate forcing by aerosols. IPCC’s best estimates for climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing both understate reality. Preservation of global shorelines and global climate patterns – the world humanity is adapted to – likely will require at least partly reversing global warming. Required actions and time scale are undefined. A bright future for today’s young people is still possible, but its attainment is hampered by precatory (wishful thinking) policies that do not realistically account for global energy needs and aspirations of nations with emerging economies. An alternative is needed to the GCM-dominated perspective on climate science. We will bear a heavy burden if we stand silent or meek as the world continues on its present course.
Our paper, Global Warming in the Pipeline, was greeted by a few scientists, among the most active in communication with the public, with denial. Our friend Michael Mann, e.g., with a large public following, refused to concede that global warming is accelerating. We mention Mike because we know that he won’t take this notation personally. Accelerated global warming is the first significant change of global warming rate since 1970. It is important because it confirms the futility of “net zero” hopium that serves as present energy policy and because we are running short of time to avoid passing the point of no return.

Check out the full March 29th update.

Comments on Global Warming Acceleration, Sulfur Emissions, Observations.

Global temperature (12-month mean) is still rising at 1.56°C relative to 1880-1920 in the GISS analysis through April (Fig. 1). [Robert Rohde reports that it is 1.65°C relative to 1850-1900 in the BerkeleyEarth analysis.] Global temperature is likely to continue to rise a bit for at least a month, peak this summer, and then decline as the El Nino fades toward La Nina.

Acceleration of global warming is now hard to deny. The GISS 12-month temperature is now 0.36°C above the 0.18°C/decade trend line, which is 3.6 times the standard deviation (0.1°C). Confidence in global warming acceleration thus exceeds 99%, but we need to see how far temperature falls with the next La Nina before evaluating the post-2010 global warming rate.

Present extreme planetary energy imbalance will limit La Nina-driven temperature decline. Thus, El Nino/La Nina average global temperature likely is about 1.5°C, suggesting that, for all practical purposes, global temperature has already reached that milestone. Temperature is temporarily well above the 50-100 percent increase that we projected (yellow region in Fig. 1) for the post-2010 warming rate. That projected increase is based on evidence that human-made aerosols and their cooling effect are in decline. In other words, we are beginning to realize the consequences of the Faustian bargain, in which humanity partly offset greenhouse gas warming with aerosol (particulate air pollution) cooling. Accurate evaluation of human-made aerosol forcing has double importance because of implications for climate sensitivity, as we have discussed elsewhere. If IPCC has underestimated aerosol forcing, they probably have also underestimated climate sensitivity.

Check out the full May 16th update.

20) Russia reportedly finds vast oil and gas reserves in British Antarctic territory.

Russia has reportedly found huge oil and gas reserves in British Antarctic territory, potentially leading to drilling in the protected region, according to the British publication The Telegraph and several online reports. The reserves uncovered are said to contain around 511 billion barrels worth of oil, equating to around 10 times the North Sea’s output over the last 50 years.
The discovery, per Russian research ships, was revealed in evidence submitted to the British Commons Environment Audit Committee last week. The committee was assessing questions regarding oil and gas research on ships owned by the Kremlin’s Rosgeo, the largest geological exploration company in Russia. In particular, Rosgeo’s Alexander Karpinsky vessel is said to have conducted a number of surveys in the region.

Check out the full article on the "Offshore" website. "Offshore" provides info to the offshore oil, gas and renewable energy industries.

21) Piloting underwater gliders into the heart of Earth's strongest current.

RV Investigator set out from Hobart to investigate why the planet’s strongest current is leaking warm water into the polar seas. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current acts as a buffer between warm water to the north and the icy continent to the south. It helps keep Antarctica frozen. However, its whirling eddies and finer scale dynamics result in warm water seeping through this barrier towards Antarctica.

The science team on board RV Investigator was led by the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership and CSIRO. Researchers wanted to paint a more detailed picture of these eddies and small-scale processes, to better understand the role they play in transporting heat across the current. The voyage sought to validate, for the first time, data of the Southern Ocean taken by the new Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. SWOT is revolutionising how scientists observe Earth’s water elevation with 2 kilometres pixel, high-definition, topography. This is 10 times better than previously available.

Check out the full article and excellent infographics on the CSIRO website.

22) Climate Change Is Likely to Slash Global Income.

Here is more research highlighting that the cost of meeting disruptions arising from climate breakdown are far higher than the costs of making serious efforts to mitigate emissions now. It's logical of course, but unfortunately with the economic system we are addicted to, using money and resources today to improve the outcomes for our grandchildren tomorrow doesn't have a very high priority.

Here's an extract from the article on the EOS website. EOS is published by AGU (Advancing Earth and Space Sciences), which is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in the Earth and Space sciences.

A new study estimates that climate change could cost $38 trillion per year, but emissions mitigation and adaptation strategies could limit future damages. Worldwide income may fall by 19% by 2049 because of changes in climate. That’s according to a new study published in Nature. Poorer countries in the tropics that have historically contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions will experience the greatest economic burden, researchers said.

The “huge” $38 trillion annual price tag of climate-related damages is 6 times greater than the cost of mitigating emissions to meet the targets in the Paris Agreement, said Anders Levermann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the study’s authors. The treaty aims to limit global average temperatures to 1.5°C–2°C above preindustrial levels by 2100.

23) The Hydrogen Stream: Stadler finalizes longest hydrogen train test.

Stadler says it has wrapped up a hydrogen train test, while Ballard has secured a long-term agreement to supply 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell engines through 2027. Stadler said that the FLIRT H2 has made it into the Guinness World Records database for the longest distance traveled by a pilot hydrogen fuel-cell, electric multiple-unit passenger train without refueling or recharging, covering 1,741.7 miles (2,803 kilometers). The Swiss company presented the train at InnoTrans 2022 in Berlin. “A significant number of detailed solutions were developed to integrate fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems into the modern FLIRT commuter train product line,” said Stadler. “These solutions have since been tested thoroughly, first in Switzerland and more recently on a dedicated test ring in Colorado in the United States.”

Check out the full article on the PV Magazine website for other H2 developments, if you're interested. 

24) Plastic-production emissions could triple to one-fifth of Earth’s carbon budget - Report.

By the middle of the century, pollution from plastic industry could ‘undermine world’s effort’ to control climate crisis. The production of plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, is greenhouse gas-intensive. Coal, oil or gas must first be mined or extracted, and then those materials must be refined and processed in another emissions-heavy procedure. In some cases, other chemical compounds such as formaldehyde must also be produced, creating more pollution. Fully decarbonizing the power grid – a key focus of global climate plans – could limit this climate impact, yet would still leave the world on a perilous path. As much as 70% of the fossil fuel used in plastic creation comes from the raw materials used in production – not the electricity used in processing – the authors write.

The report was released before the 4th Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC4) meeting for a global plastics treaty set to start next week in Ottawa, Canada. Neil Tangri, science and policy director at the environmental justice group Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, who reviewed the report, said the findings made it clear that plastic production was a “wrecking ball for our climate” and that he hoped it would influence the forthcoming negotiations. “This report provides negotiators with the strongest scientific evidence to date on the need to stop and reverse the expansion of plastic production,” he said.

Reading this article in the Guardian was a bit of an eye-opener, as I hadn't realised the GHG impacts of plastics production were quite so significant!

25) 77% of top Climate Scientists think 2.5°C of warming is coming – and they’re horrified.

I know readers of this newsletter don't need reminding that we are facing a major crisis with climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, and that we don't have time to prevaricate. I've included this one article published on the Australian website "Pearls and Irritations." because I think the views expressed by a variety of climate scientists are worth sharing.

Nearly 80% of top-level climate scientists expect that global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5°C by 2100, while only 6% thought the world would succeed in limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre industrial levels, a survey published Wednesday by The Guardian revealed. Nearly three-quarters blamed world leaders’ insufficient action on a lack of political will, while 60% said that corporate interests such as fossil fuel companies were interfering with progress. “I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one South African scientist told The Guardian. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible—we live in an age of fools.”

NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus shared the article with a plea to “please start listening.” “Elected and corporate ‘leaders’ continue to prioritise their personal power and wealth at the cost of irreversible loss of essentially everything, even as this irreversible loss comes more and more into focus. I see this as literally a form of insanity,” Kalmus wrote, adding that “capitalism tends to elevate the worst among us into the seats of power.” However, he took issue with the idea that a future of unchecked climate change would be only “semi-dystopian.”
“We’re also at risk of losing any gradual bending toward progress, and equity, and compassion, and love,” Kalmus said. “All social and cultural struggles must recognise this deep intersection with the climate struggle.”

LOCAL

1) Media article written by CKM member Tom Powell since the last newsletter.

03/02/2024 - Who are Climate Karanga Marlborough?

Ian Allen at the Marlborough Express has invited us to contribute one article a month for their weekend edition so you will be seeing regular contributions from Tom in the future. Click on the link above to check out the first one published early in February.

2) Marlborough District Council Climate Change sub-committee.

The CC sub-committee that was formed after the local body elections in 2022 finally met on January 30th. Two reports were presented at the meeting. Firstly the Emissions Inventory Report for 2022/23 which shows in detail the calculated emissions of activities that contribute to MDC’s direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions from its operations. You can read the staff report to the sub-committee and/or study the full Greenhouse Gas Inventory report  from consultants WSP if interested.

After the presentation of reports and some committee discussion CKM were invited to make a short presentation. I spoke to the committee and shared a couple of slides highlighting the latest report from the Stockholm Resilience Centre on the 9 identified Planetary boundaries, of which 6 have now been exceeded, and the 4 Laws of Ecology first expressed by Barry Commoner in the 1970's. Our contribution was well received and there was some useful informal discussion once the meeting was closed. You can check out my presentation if you're interested which has links to the material mentioned above. You can also read Penny Wardle’s article about the meeting published in the Express.

I recommend "Earth beyond six of nine Planetary Boundaries" if you are interested in the details of the latest Planetary Boundaries report.

3) Climate Action Week - 2024.

Catherine van der Muelen who is the driving force behind the Climate Action Marlborough group organised the second Climate Action Week from February 19 - 23. The program for the week covered the themes of Financing the Future for Post Growth and Impact, Transitioning to a low Carbon Emissions Economy, Energising Marlborough's Future, A bio-diverse Marlborough and Regenerative and Emerging economies.  Hopefully you will have seen the comprehensive Weekend Express from February 17th which contains a "conversation about climate" between Kathryn Cannan and Marlborough Girls' College environmental prefect Alex Phelps plus a range of essays on climate and environment related topics.

If you're interested in learning more about what happened over the week check out this summary put together by Tom who attended all 5 days.

I managed to track down three of the essays published in the Weekend Express on the PressReader website -

• "Is there an elephant in the room."
• "Still work to do to protect our biodiversity".
• "How to degrow your business".

4) Kelp Blue.

One of the speakers on the first day of Climate Action Week was Daniel Hooft from Kelp Blue. They are a company that farms giant kelp in Namibia and are also starting farms in Akaroa Harbour and in Alaska. Daniel happened to be in Marlborough and was able to attend the first morning for a couple of hours. It was great to have the opportunity to hear about their achievements growing giant kelp and the potential it has for carbon sequestration. You can learn more about this venture from their website.

"Kelp draws down more CO2 than terrestrial forests. By planting large scale Kelp Forests we can both restore the natural ocean wilderness, and capture carbon and throw away the key, keeping it locked away. As custodians of the planet we have a responsibility towards its preservation and protection. But excess human-made atmospheric CO2, the acidification of the oceans and the resulting destruction of marine ecosystems are just some of the areas where urgent action is needed to reverse the damage we have done. We believe cultivating kelp can be an important tool, together with carbon mitigation measures, to help restore planetary health.

At Kelp Blue, we’re optimists and know action is possible. By planting large scale Kelp Forests we can both restore the natural ocean wilderness, and capture carbon and throw away the key, keeping it locked away forever. Kelp is one of the fastest growing organisms on the planet and can grow up to 60 cm in a day and reach lengths of up to 40 meters. To fuel this rapid growth, kelp performs photosynthesis. Through this process, carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and converted and stored (“sequestered”) into various parts of the organism (the stipe, the fronds, the bladders, the holdfast etc).

Kelp continuously releases organic material, some of which is minuscule and dissolves in water, called Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC), and some larger material not able to dissolve in water. Any part of the kelp that breaks off and in size is larger than a pinhead is called Particulate Organic Carbon (POC). DOC released by the kelp is immediately consumed by microbes or is transported out to sea where it sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor. Because the bottom of the ocean is unlikely to be disturbed and has very little human contact, the risk of the carbon being released is effectively zero, it can therefore be considered “permanently sequestered”

Here also is the website of a Kiwi organisation interested in seaweed farming called Blue Carbon. The "Climate Change" page on their website makes for some interesting reading.

Tom Powell has also provided the following information learned during the Climate Action Week activities. 

One of the other benefits of kelp farming is that it raises the pH (lowers the acidity) of surrounding seawater by removing CO2 for photosynthesis.  I’ve written the chemical reaction below.  Remove CO2 on the right and it forces the reaction to the right, removing hydrogen ions, which constitute acid.
 
HCO3- + H+ => H2CO3 => H2O + CO2
 
It may be in coming years that mussel farms will need to intercrop kelp just to allow the mussels to build healthy shells.

5) Government announce plan for Fast Track legislation.

A letter was released to the public on January 31st by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop, announcing the governments intention to introduce Fast Track consenting legislation and make changes to the National Policy Statement on Freshwater. They also intend to progress changes to how the hierarchy of obligations contained in the Te Mana o te Wai provisions of the NPS-FM apply to consent applications and consent decisions. CKM are deeply concerned about the implications of these proposed changes for the environment in NZ. Don Quick wrote a response for CKM that was sent to the minister.

If you are interested you might also like to read this hard-hitting response from Gary Taylor of the Environmental Defence Society.

6) Another missile launched in Government’s war on nature.

This media statement released by the Environment Defense Society (EDS) is another hard-hitting statement from Gary questioning the priorities of this new government and showing what we can expect. I have to say it is alarming to see some of the quickfire decisions they are making, which appear to show a complete lack of understanding that it is the environment, good old Mother Nature, that we rely on 100% for our continued lifestyles. Taking for granted what she gives us every day is arrogant and self defeating. This latest decision is particularly applicable to us here in Marlborough where marine farming is such an important part of our local economy.

Here is an extract.

"The Government’s arrogant disregard for the natural world is again on display, this time threatening coastal waters and the ocean, as it plans to automatically extend the duration of all marine farm consents in the country. And it is giving stakeholders just one week to provide feedback. There are approximately 1200 marine farms in New Zealand and the proposal is to enable all of those, without exception, to continue operating for another 25 years (in addition to what they’re already consented for, which may be as long as 35 years). The extensions will be legislated for, without any substantive community input or assessment of environmental effects.

“This is a preposterous proposal,” says EDS CEO Gary Taylor.

“We know our seas are warming and acidifying and sites that may have been suitable for marine farming in the past will not necessarily be so in the future. We are already seeing the die-off of hundreds of salmon in the Marlborough Sounds during the warm summer months. “Aquaculture is a good way of feeding people, but it has the potential to cause significant adverse effects on marine ecosystems if located in the wrong place. In particular, farms located in shallow, low flow sites can significantly impact the water column and seabed habitats through the discharge of uneaten food, excrement and shell drop-off."

7) Marlborough Airport Ltd (MAL) public consultation - "A Sustainable Future."

I reported in the last newsletter about my participation in one of several focus groups organised by MAL and MDC with the aim of trying to identify the "most important issues to foster a sustainable future, including environmental, social, economic and cultural issues."  From these focus groups they identified 20 topics that they think are important to their operations now and in the future. The next step of the process was an invitation to interested people to participate in a survey which closed early in February. CKM made a group submission plus several members contributed individual submissions. These submissions challenged the dominant narrative that flying is something to be encouraged and put the idea to MAL that they should be actively discouraging unnecessary flying wherever possible if they are truly interested in a sustainable future. You can check out our group submission if you're interested to see more details.

8) Will water users from the Wairau Aquifer face their first ever cutoff this summer?

CKM have had an ongoing interest in the situation with the long term decline in the Wairau Aquifer and the research trying to understand the causes of this and what might be the best ways to manage future water allocation.

Here is an extract from my last report on this matter in August last year.

Some limits were set when the draft Marlborough Environment Plan (pMEP) was first released in 2016 along with limits on all other rivers and aquifers in Marlborough. It is relatively simple to manage limits in rivers by measuring river flows and applying appropriate cut-offs to  retain adequate flows in the rivers to meet environmental needs. As it is not possible to measure flows into the aquifer this method is not  available. It can only be done by monitoring the fluctuating aquifer levels. With the Wairau aquifer being so dynamic, these fluctuations can  be large in short time periods. The Wairau aquifer did have an annual maximum extraction limit set of 73,000,000 M3. The latest data on  extraction indicates up to about half of that amount (about 35,000,000 M3) is currently being extracted annually depending on the season.  Additional limits aiming to protect the springs were also set on three sub-zones adjacent to the springs where cut-offs apply once the aquifer  drops to pre-set levels. As I’ve reported before, with the knowledge gained from the GBR research, it is now accepted that neither of these  options are seen as being fair and equitable for users or adequate for optimum springs protection. In other words the hard cut-offs in the  MEP are now seen as not viable. The water users in these sub-zones all objected but after discussions have agreed to accept the current limits as defined in the pMEP pending the completion of the process described in this paper. An annual allocation is also seen as too crude for  managing seasonal variations.
 
The three sub-zones referred to above are named Northern Springs, Central Springs and Urban Springs. They are all trending downwards at the moment due to the current extended dry period on top of the identified long term decline and are likely to reach the MEP limits in the next week or two without significant rain in the Wairau catchment. This would be the first time this has ever happened. If it does happens MDC have made the decision not to apply the limits this summer as the ongoing research and planning process aims to produce a new management regime before next year. There are only about 60 commercial users in the three sub-zones out of the total of about 1000 for the whole aquifer zone and placing limits on them would be unfair and not make a significant difference. As explained in my August report the new regime will likely treat all consent holders using water from the aquifer equally, but the final model has still to be decided.

9) GNS research on historic lower Wairau Plains sea levels.

I reported in the November newsletter that Paul White and Martin Crundwell from GNS Science were giving a talk at the Marlborough Research Centre on December 11th. The topic was “Coastal Wairau Plain geological evolution in the last 10,000 years and what this could mean for the future.” Paul and Martin, through their research have identified where the coastline was during the Holocene about 8,000 years ago, when sea levels were roughly 1 to 1.5 metres higher than now. For anyone interested in this topic who didn't make it to the talk you can have a look at the powerpoint presentation. Slides 45 to 48 are of interest showing different historic coastlines. At 7700 years ago the coastline was roughly where SH1 currently runs between Blenheim and Tuamarina. The file is too large to include in this newsletter but if you email me I can send you a copy.

10) Earth Day 2024.

The annual Earth Day will again be run by members of Envirohub with support from CKM. The date has been set for April 21st at Pollard Park on the usual site. Put it in your diary and watch out for more info about the activities being planned for the day.

11) Report says top of the south could be powered mostly by biomass.

This article from Stuff is a follow up on items we've shared in the past looking at the potential for using wood as a major source of energy in Te Tauihu.

'Wood could be the next big thing powering the top of the south, a new report says. Published by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) on Friday, the Regional Energy Transition Accelerator (RETA) report said the forestry sector could play a key role in powering Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough in future years.

The report showed that up to 72% of the top of the south’s energy needs could be met using biomass by 2037, pushing more fossil fuels out of the energy system and increasing the demand for wood residues. EECA group manager for business Nicki Sutherland said Te Tauihu was a forestry-rich area, and Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough were “well positioned” to use their resources to “bring in a clean and clever approach to industrial processing”.'

NATIONAL

12) Closing Time: Why Aotearoa needs a just transition from fossil fuel production now.

This Oxfam report shows that we urgently need a just transition to end production of oil, gas and coal in Aotearoa, as part of a full, fast, fair and funded global phase out of fossil fuels.

• Fossil fuel production has to end everywhere as fast as possible, with countries like New Zealand taking the lead.
• Overturning New Zealand’s ban on new offshore oil and gas would be a costly and short-sighted mistake, and quite frankly embarrassing for the whole country.
• The New Zealand Government needs to manage a decline in fossil fuel production, with a just transition to protect our communities.

Our fossil fuel-dependent economy in Aotearoa New Zealand has been founded on the violent dispossession of tangata whenua and ongoing breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Moving beyond fossil fuels can be part of our journey to a just future from an unjust past.

Oil and gas production in New Zealand is already declining at exactly the rate needed for an  average share of the global phase out needed for 1.5 degrees. Doing our fair share would mean closing existing fields early.
• Production from  New Zealand’s currently developed oil and gas fields is projected to decline by 62% and 43% respectively by 2030. This represents a combined reduction of 48% in the annual emissions embodied in the produced fuels, which is the average global reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that the IPCC says is needed to keep global average temperature increases below 1.5 degrees.
• As a developed economy, with historical responsibility for past carbon emissions and with a high capacity to transition, New Zealand needs to end fossil fuel production earlier than the global average. To contribute our fair share, New Zealand needs to close existing oil and gas fields early as part of a managed decline with a just transition. There is no way that exploring for new oil and gas fields can be consistent with the 1.5 degrees limit.

The section headed "A just future from an unjust past" (page 15) talks about the "economies of mana" and gives some very good food for thought about ways we could change and adapt our economic system if we chose to.

It states - "In economies of mana, people, land and resources are bound together by whakapapa, and this carries significant obligations. Manaakitanga drives escalating reciprocal exchanges of taonga and resources that create and maintain social obligations, determined and regulated by tikanga, and conducted within a web of whakapapa. In these exchanges, mana is attained by how much passes through one’s hands rather than how much accumulates in one’s hands. The focus on reciprocal exchange rather than accumulation in economies of mana makes a deep difference to how people interact with each other and with the natural world. Because economies of mana are not based on a drive for accumulation, there is not the same incentive to pursue growth at all costs. This means that economies of mana are more able to adapt when confronted with ecological and social limits. In an economy of mana, natural resources are not treated as property to be exploited, but are governed by tikanga that recognise the interconnected mana of people and nature. Similarly, rather than labour being an exploitative relationship controlled by those who have accumulated the most wealth, mahi has dignity and forms part of reciprocal relationships and collective efforts."

13) We could forecast floods better. Why don’t we?

"Floods are New Zealand’s most frequent disaster, and one of the most costly. But regions have varying abilities to predict floods depending on local councils’ ability to buy weather data. And though that data is publicly funded, scientists who have created a national flood-forecasting system cannot put it into practice without free access to the same information. Should we prioritise profitability of our research institutes, or public safety?"

This article in the NZ Geographic highlights another ridiculous outcome of the profit driven revolution in the 1980's and '90's that took perfectly well functioning public institutions that served the people of NZ and mandated that making a profit was their priority. Now we all pay the real price! I do wonder how some of the people who made these ideologically based decisions sleep at night? I recommend reading this article.

14) Mike Smith's court case against seven large NZ corporates.

This extract from the Simpson Grierson website gives an outline of the case and the Supreme Court's decision.

"After almost 18 months of deliberation, the Supreme Court has issued its landmark decision in Smith v Fonterra and has allowed all claims against a number of major corporates to proceed to trial. In finding that the Court of Appeal was wrong to strike out claims in tort against companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, the judgment will shape the future of climate change litigation in Aotearoa New Zealand.

KEY TAKEAWAYS -

• The Court of Appeal’s decision that Mr Smith’s claims were not legally tenable has been resoundingly overturned. All three claims have been reinstated and are allowed to proceed to trial.
• The Court’s refusal to strike out is not an assessment that the claim will succeed at trial. At this point, the Court has ruled simply that the claims are not bound to fail. The Court demonstrated a reluctance to strike out a claim that is novel, if it is founded on seriously arguable non-trivial harm - even if attribution to individual respondents remains difficult. Liability will now be a matter for the High Court to determine, following consideration of complex legal issues and factual and expert evidence. 
• The Supreme Court’s judgment focussed primarily on the claim of public nuisance (being that the defendant companies are substantially and unreasonably interfering with rights to public health, safety, comfort, convenience and peace). Whether or not they are actually liable in nuisance remains a fundamental issue for trial, with the battleground between the parties focussed on causation, substantiality and reasonableness, as well as what - if any - remedy Mr Smith should be granted.
• The Court said that there was no need to consider the other two tort claims - there was no efficiency in striking them out given that the public nuisance tort was being reinstated. As such, the claim for negligence and the novel climate system damage claim will also go through to trial. 
• As the harm claimed by Mr Smith invoked tikanga-related interests, the High Court will also need to address and assess matters of tikanga at trial. In reaching this view, the Supreme Court has further cemented the role of tikanga as a fundamental aspect of the laws of New Zealand."

The article concludes with the statement - "Overall, the judgment will be met with enthusiasm and optimism by climate activists, not just in New Zealand but around the common law world. However, until the High Court hears full argument and evidence, the real significance of the decision, and its ramifications for corporate emitters, remains unknown. Given the number of parties and complexity of issues the High Court trial and subsequent judgment is likely to be some time away and, regardless of result, will almost certainly be the subject of appeals."

You can read the full report on the Simpson Grierson website plus further info from RNZ and an article on the Stuff website.

The RNZ item states - "An important feature of the case is the role of tikanga Māori, and how it determines Smith's relationship to coastal land and waters which are being flooded and damaged. The Supreme Court noted it was not ruling on whether the case had a good chance of succeeding, only that "Mr Smith now gets his day in court". Smith said he hoped the ruling would mean he would get a court date soon, but he did not know yet. "No we don't but it needs to be fast because the judgement spoke to the windown of opportunity closing fast., It's really good they picked up on that. So hopefully they'll hear the case soon on the strength of that."

Smith was not seeking money, he just wanted a safer world. "It is our sacred duty to protect the future for our children and our grandchildren and the generations yet to be born. It doesn't matter what nationality they are or what ethnic culture or religion whatever, they're entitled to be on this Earth and to live safely."

15) Waitangi Tribunal to hold inquiry into climate change policy.

The following statement was published earlier in February on the Voxy website.

“The Crown will finally be held to account in front of the Waitangi Tribunal for its failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and being complicit in the destruction of our natural world and rising harm to communities across the country from climate chaos ” says Tuhi-Ao Bailey, claimant for WAI3262 on behalf of Climate Justice Taranaki.

The Waitangi Tribunal has decided to hold a priority kaupapa inquiry into climate change policy. In its recent decision, the Waitangi Tribunal noted that “climate change is an existential threat not only to the claimants, but to Māori and the nation. All credible evidence points to climate change as a significant and potentially irreversible threat unless governments take urgent action. Māori have a unique and significant relationship with te taiao and the Tribunal can provide advice and guidance to the Crown as to interpretation of Treaty principles in this context.”

This means that the climate change hearing will sit alongside other significant kaupapa inquiries such as the Mana Wāhine inquiry and the Constitutional kaupapa inquiry. “Together with the other claimants, we are ready to make our case in front of the Waitangi Tribunal to demonstrate how successive governments have generated inadequate climate change policy that has favoured polluting industries such as dirty dairying and oil, coal and gas mining over protecting communities and the planet. The Waitangi Tribunal noted our Toitū Taranaki 2030 plan which is a community powered strategy for a fast and just carbon neutral transition as an alternative approach to mitigation that aligns with Te Tiriti o Waitangi” says Tuhi-Ao Bailey.

“With Mike Smith suing big polluters like Fonterra, Genesis Energy and Z Energy in the High Court for public nuisance and negligence for their contributions to climate change, we are now able to open another legal front in the quest to protect future generations from harm perpetuated by the crown and dirty companies. Across Aotearoa, hapū, iwi, community groups, students, workers unions and migrant organisations are mobilising and working together in the quest for climate justice. In 1854, our people in Taranaki collectively said ‘te tangata tōmua, te whenua tōmuri” – we will keep fighting to protect our land and our people. Collectively, we are upholding this legacy. Together, we rise for system change to ensure a just and peaceful future for all our tamariki and mokopuna” concludes Tuhi-Ao Bailey.

16) Five climate lessons from Māori communities (that are guaranteed not to depress you).

This article from the Spinoff carries on with a focus on the role of Tikanga Māori and how it can help to guide us here in NZ, as we deal with the consequences of our actions. This extract gives plenty of food for thought.

In environmental spaces, you’ll often hear the phrase “climate change is going to hit indigenous communities first and worst”. Invariably, it isn’t Māori saying it. That’s because the climate crisis isn’t imminent. Ever since the arrival of settlers and the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, marae, hapū and iwi have been responding to catastrophic environmental changes caused by human activities. The only difference now is the consequences have become so widespread and severe, governments can no longer deny it is a crisis.

The tendency to diagnose climate change solely by environmental symptoms – rising seas, extreme weather, drought, biodiversity loss – is a dangerous blind spot. Not only does it position the environment as the enemy, it shifts responsibility for global warming away from those who benefit from the hierarchies that privilege a few at the expense of every other living thing on the planet.

These hierarchies are the same hierarchies that dispossessed Māori of their land, destroyed native forests, subjugated Māori knowledge, and created dependence where once there was sovereignty and self-sufficiency. To put it in plain language: climate change and colonisation share the same whakapapa.

As Qiane Matata-Sipu, who works with Bishop and Newton in the Te Ahiwaru team, said: “We forget that the atua made us. We are the pōtiki. That’s the essence of the whakatauki ‘whatungarongaro te tangata, toitū te whenua’. We could all drop dead tomorrow and these things will thrive without us. We are the ones who need the whenua and the moana and the awa, not the other way around. That’s why it’s a bit egotistical to say we’re going to help the atua, because it’s us who need their awhi. We are the ones who need healing. Our mental wellbeing, every thread of our being, is tied into the health of te taiao.”

17) The ordinary rock we drive on holds a planet-saving secret.

This is a follow up from an item I put in the January 2022 newsletter (item 20). Aspiring Materials have further developed their plan to use olivine rock, which is abundant in different places around the world including in the South Island to sequester carbon. They are making big claims about what they believe they can achieve.

Below is an extract from an article on the Stuff website which gives a good outline of their work and you can also check out their website for more info. The scientists developing the process are clearly feeling very positive about the hugh potential they believe is there for sequestering large amounts of carbon.

Here also is another article from the Scoop website

"Olivine is found across the South Island and contains iron, silicon and magnesium – all sought-after materials. Typically, vast amounts of planet-heating carbon emissions are produced mining and refining these minerals around the globe.

Now, Christchurch scientists Chris Oze and Megan Danczyk have a carbon-free way to pull them from olivine. The pair needs $10 million to build their first plant before their idea could “reverse” climate change, Oze said. But first, Oze and Danczyk will need to take the process from the lab to small-scale production. From next year, the proposed $10m pilot plant could transform one tonne of olivine per day into refined minerals – saving up to three tonnes of carbon pollution.

Olivine – “the most abundant rock on Earth” – is combined with acidic liquid, and transformed into an elemental soup using renewable electricity, Danczyk said. The iron, silica and magnesium are separated and can be sold – replacing other mining operations.

“People are making this stuff already… We’re just making them without carbon,” she said. “People are trying to condense carbon dioxide to have it react with the rock. We’ve done the exact opposite… we’re freeing up the magnesium to do its job naturally. It wants to react with the carbon dioxide.” A carbon-capture device could vacuum up emissions from a high-polluting factory before they leave the smokestack, or be used to bring down the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

The final product, magnesium carbonate – a “totally stable”, fire-retardant substance – could be used in the construction industry, Danczyk said, for example to make drywall.The team wants a zero-waste process. After the iron, silica and magnesium is removed, a “salty solution” remains, Oze said. That liquid can be split using electricity to make oxygen and hydrogen gas – two more desirable products, he added. “Everything gets recycled.”

Putting everything to good use also makes the process cost-effective, he said. “If we sold all the other products – the hydrogen, the iron, the silica – … we can offer direct-air or industry carbon capture for free.” Oze and Danczyk, who both shifted from the US to Aotearoa to develop this technology, find optimism in their work’s ability to save emissions and the planet. Oze added: “The future is going to be amazing. We can’t lose sight of that.”

INTERNATIONAL

18) “A Miracle Will Occur” Is Not Sensible Climate Policy.

In our last newsletter I had an item about the "Warming in the pipeline" paper from James Hansen (Item 25). This info below is a follow up from James published in December. Here is the first paragraph of this paper titled “A Miracle Will Occur” Is Not Sensible Climate Policy".

'The COP28 Chairman and the United Nations Secretary General say that the goal to keep global warming below 1.5°C is alive, albeit barely, implying that the looser goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement (to keep warming well below 2°C) is still viable. We find that even the 2°C goal is dead if policy is limited to emission reductions and plausible CO2 removal. IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which advises the UN) has understated global warming in the pipeline and understated fossil fuel emissions in the pipeline via lack of realism in the Integrated Assessment Models that IPCC uses for climate projections. Wishful thinking as a policy approach must be replaced by transparent climate analysis, knowledge of the forcings that drive climate change, and realistic assessment of policy options. The next several years provide a narrow window of time to define actions that could still achieve a bright future for today’s young people. We owe young people the knowledge and the tools to continually assess the situation and devise and adjust the course of action.'

In the blog James and his colleagues give a good outline of the science laid out in the "Warming in the pipeline" paper. As usual for his blogs it is technical but I believe very significant for those who wish to delve into the science. The most significant new information analysed in the paper is related to a decision made by the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

"Separating cloud feedbacks from aerosol induced cloud changes might be a Sisyphean task, if not for the “experiment” initiated by the  (IMO) when it placed a constraint on sulfur content of ship fuels beginning January 2015 and tightened it in January 2020.
The IMO experiment and implications.
The most informative diagnostic for interpretation of the IMO aerosol experiment is change of absorbed solar radiation. Earth radiation budget data are acquired by CERES 16 (Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System) launched early this century. CERES measures solar radiation reflected by Earth and thermal (heat) radiation emitted by Earth. Reflected solar radiation declines coincident with imposition of the IMO sulfur rules. We graph the increase of absorbed solar radiation (Fig. 2); it reveals a decrease of Earth’ albedo (reflectivity) of 0.4% (1.37/340). This reduced albedo is a BFD (a big deal). It is equivalent to a sudden increase of atmospheric CO2 from 420 ppm to 525 ppm. This large change of Earth’s albedo accelerates global warming. We will infer that most of the increased absorption of solar energy following the IMO rule change is aerosol forcing. This added forcing also spurs “fast” feedbacks, which come into play not in immediate and direct response to the forcing, but in response to global temperature change, which lags the forcing."

This further extract from his blog outlines what he believes is needed to address the serious nature of the position we are now in regarding the growing Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI). You will note it includes the controversial use of "modern nuclear power". This is a reflection of just how serious James sees the crisis we are faced with.

• A rising price on GHG emissions, enforced by border duties on products from nations without a carbon fee; but that is not enough – long-term energy planning consistent with phaseout of fossil fuel emissions over the next few decades is needed, which in many nations, if not most, implies the need for rapid development of modern nuclear power.
• Real global cooperation, in particular between the United States and China, countries with the two largest economies and the greatest GHG emissions; the present politically-driven choice to define China as an enemy, rather than negotiate fair relationships, threatens the future of young people.
• A multitude of actions are required within less than a decade to reduce and even reverse Earth’s energy imbalance for the sake of minimizing the enormous ongoing geoengineering of the planet; specifically, we will need to cool the planet to avoid consequences for young people that all people would find unconscionable.

None of the three fundamental policy actions are presently occurring. Nor are they even on the agenda of the COP (UN Conference of the Parties) meetings. Our ex-student and research  scientist, Surabi  Menon, now a staff member of ClimateWorks on leave of absence to work six months for COP28, tried to get me on the agenda there. Unsurprisingly, given the Pipeline message that I would have been carrying, she did not succeed.

On page 13 of the blog there is reference to significant differences between the general IPCC views, some climate scientists (Zeke Hausfather, Johan Rockstrom and Michael Mann) and James and his team. Those differences indicate that when James tried to speak to their paper at COP28 he was not accepted as a speaker. It is normal for most people to think the mainstream conclusions are more likely to be correct. My inclination is to go with the outlier views. History shows that they are often closer to the truth. Here is a comment from James in the blog to finish with.

"Why am I optimistic about the possibility of a happy ending to the climate crisis? Mainly because of all the bright young people who can understand what is needed and are willing to work to make it happen. Young people can see and understand that the old geezers running the world are geoengineering the planet to destruction."

This article from the Conversation about the difference in views between Mann and Hansen is worth a read if you're interested in their different perspectives. It is written by two scientists Robert Chris from The Open University and Hugh Hunt from University of Cambridge and they say -

"We are scientists who study the feasibility and effectiveness of alternative responses to climate change, addressing both the engineering and political realities of enabling change at the scale and speed necessary. We find Mann’s rebuttal of Hansen’s claims unconvincing. Crucially, Mann does not engage directly with Hansen’s analysis of new data covering the last 65 million years.

Hansen explains how the models used by IPCC scientists to assess future climate scenarios have significantly underestimated the warming effect of increased greenhouse gas emissions, the cooling effect of aerosols and how long the climate takes to respond to these changes. Besides greenhouse gases, humanity also emits aerosols. These are tiny particles comprising a wide range of chemicals. Some, such as the sulphur dioxide emitted when coal and oil are burned, offset the warming from greenhouse gases by reflecting sunlight back to space.

Others, such as soot, have the opposite effect and add to warming. The cooling aerosols dominate by a large margin.

Hansen projects that in coming months, lower levels of aerosol pollution from shipping will cause warming of as much as 0.5°C more than IPCC models have predicted. This will take global warming close to 2°C as early as next year, although it is likely then to fall slightly as the present El Niño wanes.

Underpinning Hansen’s argument is his conviction that the climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously reported. The IPCC estimates that doubling atmospheric CO₂ raises Earth’s temperature by 3°C. Hansen calculates it to be 4.8°C. This, and the much longer climate response time that Hansen calculates from the historical record, would have a significant impact on climate model projections."

James has published two more blogs in January both of which provide further concerning information. The first is titled "Groundhog Day. Another Gobsmackingly Bananas Month. What’s Up?"

The abstract states - "December was the 7th consecutive month of record-shattering global temperature, driven by the combination of a  moderately strong El Nino and a large decrease of Earth’s albedo. The El Nino will fade in the next few months, but we anticipate that the string of record monthly temperatures will continue to a total of 12 and possibly 13 months because of Earth’s unprecedented energy imbalance. By May the 12-month running-mean global temperature relative to 1880-1920 should be +1.6-1.7°C and not fall below +1.4 ± 0.1°C during the next La Nina minimum. Thus, given the planetary energy imbalance, it will be clear that the 1.5°C ceiling has been passed for all practical purposes."


19) Here’s a question Cop28 won’t address: why are billionaires blocking action to save the planet?

This article in the Guardian by George Monbiot, was published before COP 28 and shines a light on the huge inequality on our planet with a very big proportion of the resources and finance being controlled by a very small number of people. The final paragraph in this extract is one I'm 100% in agreement with. I believe that until we can collectively face this extreme imbalance and rectify it we have no chance of seriously making the big changes that have to happen if we are to maintain a viable life-supporting biosphere.

"But we cannot discount the possibility that some of these people really don’t care, even about their own children. There are two convergent forces here: first, many of those who rise to positions of great economic or political power have personality disorders, particularly narcissism or psychopathy. These disorders are often the driving forces behind their ambition, and the means by which they overcome obstacles to the acquisition of wealth and power – such as guilt about their treatment of others – which would deter other people from achieving such dominance.

The second factor is that once great wealth has been acquired, it seems to reinforce these tendencies, inhibiting connection, affection and contrition. Money buys isolation. It allows people to wall themselves off from others, in their mansions, yachts and private jets, not just physically but also cognitively, stifling awareness of their social and environmental impacts, shutting out other people’s concerns and challenges. Great wealth encourages a sense of entitlement and egotism. It seems to suppress trust, empathy and generosity. Affluence also appears to diminish people’s interest in looking after their own children. If any other condition generated these symptoms, we would call it a mental illness. Perhaps this is how extreme wealth should be classified.

So the fight against environmental breakdown is not and has never been just a fight against environmental breakdown. It is also a fight against the great maldistribution of wealth and power that blights every aspect of life on planet Earth. Billionaires – even the more enlightened ones – are bad for us. We cannot afford to keep them."

20) Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years.

This Oxfam media release from January contains some pretty astounding statistics, as a follow on from the previous item, and confirms the urgent needed to redress this unjustifiable imbalance for the sake of all life forms on our beautiful planet. It identifies how that imbalance grew even larger over the Covid period.

"Billionaire fortunes are increasing by US$2.7 billion (NZ$4.2 billion) a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages. A tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise US$1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.

The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth US$42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth."

21) The new ‘scramble for Africa’: how a UAE sheikh quietly made carbon deals for forests bigger than UK.

This is a very interesting article which raises some important questions around the use of carbon credits and their validity as a way of trying to reduce GHG emissions. I struggle with the whole idea of forests being used to offset carbon. We've destroyed so much forest over the centuries that used to be an important part of the natural planetary carbon cycle. How can we claim that existing and regenerating forests are offsetting fossil fuels emissions when millions of hectares of forests need to be regenerated just to replace what has been destroyed. To suggest we can offset the carbon emission from fossil fuels that is from forests that grew millions of years ago when we haven't even replaced what we've destroyed over the last few centuries is magical thinking in my opinion.
For some time now I've also had this big question in my mind about countries claiming they will meet their Paris commitments by buying credits from other countries. NZ is a prime example. The thing that has bothered me is no one says who these other mythical countries are that are going to have so many excess credits above their own commitments, that they will be able to come to the rescue of rich countries like us. In this article I was interested to note that it appears some African countries will sell credits to get desperately needed funds and then not be able to meet their own Paris commitments. They will only succeed in pushing indigenous people off their traditional lands, which seems very much like another colonial land grab. Have a read of the article and decide for yourself if this seems like a fair way to address the whole emissions problem. 

This extract from the article highlights my concern.

"David Obura, founding director of Cordio east Africa and head of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), said: “Carbon is one of the only contributions from nature to people that is easily monetised. So, it means that all those (contributions from nature) that are not monetised get excluded or forgotten about. There are such high risks of exclusivity and obtaining access and rights away from people.”

22) Greenhouse gas emissions soar – with China, US and India most at fault. Satellite tracking data shows many countries and firms do not provide accurate figures.

I believe information like this is important for people to see and think about. The use of satellite data to identify real gains or losses with emissions is a great use of technology. It is perfectly understandable for people to want to believe that renewable energy, etc are turning the tide on GHG emissions but I personally believe that a lot of what passes as evidence for emissions reductions is too often due to creative accounting rather than actual emissions reductions. We have a very simple way of checking. The inexorable rise in CO2 levels in our atmosphere is the final evidence of which direction we are going in. The trajectory keeps increasing - until that trajectory starts flattening out I take announcements of emission reductions with a grain of salt. Basic maths tells me that if reductions are achieved in one area but cancelled out by some new development elsewhere then the CO2 curve will keep getting steeper with all the consequences that entails.

'Electricity generation in China and India, and oil and gas production in the US, have produced the biggest increases in global greenhouse gas emissions since 2015, when the Paris climate agreement was signed, new data has shown.

Emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, have also risen, despite more than 100 countries signing up to a pledge to reduce the gas, according to data published on Sunday by the Climate Trace project.

The data shows that countries and companies are failing to report their emissions accurately, despite obligations to do so under the Paris agreement. At the core of the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai is a process known as the “global stocktake” – an assessment of progress towards meeting the emissions cuts needed to stay within the 1.5C limit. Many countries, however, have failed to make updates.
Gavin McCormick, a co-founder of Climate Trace and executive director of environmental nonprofit WattTime, said: “By harnessing the power of AI and machine learning paired with the right data from satellites and beyond, our models are giving us a picture of the world we’ve never seen before. And it’s allowing us to make climate progress in a way some never believed possible.”

There was also good news. Deforestation is dropping in key regions, with emissions from the degradation and destruction of forests in the Congo Basin dropping by up to 19% in 2022, compared with the previous year.'

23) Giant batteries drain economics of gas power plants.

This article has something positive to say about the disruption to using gas-fired peaker power plants, that giant batteries are having in some parts of the world. It does bother me a little that there is no mention of the issues around supply of critical minerals required for large scale battery uptake, that I have included in previous newsletters. I'm wary when it appears people might be making assumptions that good old Mother Nature will be able keep supplying an endless amount of whatever we think we need.

"Giant batteries that ensure stable power supply by offsetting intermittent renewable supplies are becoming cheap enough to make developers abandon scores of projects for gas-fired generation world-wide. The long-term economics of gas-fired plants, used in Europe and some parts of the United States primarily to compensate for the intermittent nature of wind and solar power, are changing quickly, according to Reuters' interviews with more than a dozen power plant developers, project finance bankers, analysts and consultants. They said some battery operators are already supplying back-up power to grids at a price competitive with gas power plants, meaning gas will be used less.

Electric vehicles are a further disrupter as they can be charged when demand is weak and then power homes or send power back to the grid during peak demand periods. A typical EV sits parked 90% of the time with a battery capable of storing enough energy to power the average modern home for two days, energy software platform Kaluza said in a report published in December. In Europe, 40 million electric vehicles are expected by 2030, capable of displacing around one third of the region's gas power capacity, according to Kaluza.

"There are lots of things the grid can look to when it starts to look away from conventional generation," Carlton's Clarke said."

Summary - 

•    Data shows 68 gas plant projects cancelled or put on hold
•    Assessing economic case for new projects much harder
•    EVs could also reduce need for standby gas generation.

24) Humanity declares war on its children.

This article from the Pearls and Irritations website is hard-hitting and judging by the small number of signatures in support is not seen by many as an important issue. I signed it because it rings true for me.

Here is an extract -

"If climate were the world’s only problem, this would be bad enough. But there are nine other major risks to human civilisation. Together they add up to the greatest threat humans have ever faced in three million years of our existence. These threats cannot be separated, or dealt with singly. Some of them are even deadlier in impact than climate, though they receive much less publicity. And, in many cases, industry, wealth and governments now work hand-in-glove to make them worse.

One answer, for all those who do not wish to be destroyed by this evil confederation, is an Earth System Treaty, a global legal agreement signed and ratified by all the decent people and countries left on Earth to save a habitable planet for our children. An agreement with the power to rein in the wreckers, state or corporate. The reasons for such a treaty are many – but one thing is clear: without global agreement to overcome our existential crisis, nothing can prevent it. The petrolobby and its puppets will see to that.

Thanks to their continued sabotage of the last, best hope for humanity exemplified at COP27 and COP28 it is clear that the petrolobby is willing to sacrifice a habitable Earth and its young people to their ungoverned lust for short-term riches. Riches that will vanish as soon as the global economy collapses.

Now is the time for all good citizens of Earth to stand together, speak out and act to prevent the ruin of our world. The people who are causing it must be brought to justice for crimes against humanity."

You can check out the Earth System Treaty and watch a short youtube clip about it if interested -

25) Changing climate casts a shadow over the future of the Panama Canal – and global trade.

Isn't it ironic that oil tankers are being held up from passing through the Panama Canal due to climate change induced reduced rainfall!

To quote from this Guardian article -

"The canal authority says it is “implementing operational and planning procedures, innovative technologies, and long-term investments to mitigate [the] impact and safeguard [the canal’s] operation”. It says that the current situation is unprecedented and it “could not have predicted exactly when the water shortage would occur to the degree that we are experiencing now”.

But while the authority says it could not have predicted the crisis, others did. For years, experts have warned that the changing climate will have far-reaching effects on global supply chains and the systems that govern them.

Structures like the Panama Canal are miracles of the modern world – solid totems of engineering wonder that were responsible for accelerating the economic boom of the 20th century, pulling up living standards across the globe and ushering in a revolution in technology, healthcare and consumer culture. The tacit implication was that the natural world had been tamed. But as the seas rise and temperatures soar, those assumptions are falling like dominoes."

There is hope that things will improve when the wet season is due to start in the next month or two.
I also note in a recent update that the Canal Authority was receiving increasing demand for transits through the waterway due to the crisis in the Red Sea, but they say changes to transit restrictions will depend on water availability which has restricted the canal from accommodating rerouted traffic.

26) "Where is everybody?": The Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and climate change.

This is a worthwhile read from the Climate Brink website which looks at the question "Where is everybody", asked by the famous scientist Enrico Fermi. This is in relation to the likelihood of other forms of intelligent life being out there somewhere. The conclusion the author reaches might well be close to the mark?

"Thus, one plausible answer to Fermi’s question, “Where are they,” is that their own stupidity and greed killed them. It’s conceivable that climate change is a threat that most civilizations need to deal with. Advanced civilizations civilizations inherently require energy, which initially might be sourced from the combustion of carbon-based materials. That would lead to the emission of greenhouse gases, which would lead to climate change. So perhaps, in climate change, we’re facing the same test that most or all advanced civilizations need to pass.

But climate change is just one challenge. We also need to deal with threats of nuclear war, pandemics, economists, and many potential disasters, all of which could knock humanity off its pedestal. If we fail any of those tests, then some future alien society might one day wonder where we are."

27) Genomic evidence for West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial.

This study was a fascinating and innovative way to confirm the last major collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If their conclusions are correct this is more sobering confirmation of the difficult consequences our grandchildren and their grandchildren will be dealing with.

"How the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) responded to warmer climates in the geologic past has obvious relevance to our understanding of what its future could be as global temperatures rise due to human activities. Using genetic analyses of a type of circum-Antarctic octopus, Pareledone turqueti, Lau et al. showed that the WAIS collapsed completely during the last interglacial period, when global sea levels were 5 to 10 meters higher than today and global average temperatures were only about 1°C warmer. The implication of this finding is that major WAIS collapse and the consequent rise in sea level could be caused even by the minimal temperature rises projected for stringent climate change mitigation. —H. Jesse Smith

Abstract
The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is considered vulnerable to irreversible collapse under future climate trajectories, and its tipping point may lie within the mitigated warming scenarios of 1.5° to 2°C of the United Nations Paris Agreement. Knowledge of ice loss during similarly warm past climates could resolve this uncertainty, including the Last Interglacial when global sea levels were 5 to 10 meters higher than today and global average temperatures were 0.5° to 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial levels. Using a panel of genome-wide, single-nucleotide polymorphisms of a circum-Antarctic octopus, we show persistent, historic signals of gene flow only possible with complete WAIS collapse. Our results provide the first empirical evidence that the tipping point of WAIS loss could be reached even under stringent climate mitigation scenarios."

These two articles from CBS News and from the Smithsonian Magazine provide more info.

The scientific paper can also be purchased if you're interested.

28) Video shows research ship's "incredibly lucky" encounter with world's largest iceberg as it drifts out of Antarctica.

Check out the drone video footage which is linked to the CBS article. It's an impressive iceberg!

29) Human Behavioural crisis at root of climate breakdown say scientists.

This is a follow up to the final item in our last newsletter in November. The question of how irrational human behaviour is driving the climate and biodiversity crises and how we might change that human behaviour is an area of research that I personally find fascinating. That this work is being undertaken by the Merz Institute, which is a Kiwi company is encouraging and wonderful to see. I'm interested to note on their website that Mike Joy and Simon Michaux are two of the Institute's Trustees.

Their Mission statement says -

"Age Quod Necesse Est' literally translates to 'Do What Is Necessary'. Our broad mission ensures our continual relevance in a world where the only constant is change."

Below is an extract from an article printed in the Guardian in January.

The team calls for more interdisciplinary research into what they have dubbed the “human behavioural crisis” and concerted efforts to redefine our social norms and desires that are driving overconsumption. When asked about the ethics of such a campaign, Merz and Barnard point out that corporations fight for consumers’ attention every second of every day. “Is it ethical to exploit our psychology to benefit an economic system destroying the planet?” asks Barnard. “Creativity and innovation are driving overconsumption. The system is driving us to suicide. It’s conquest, entitlement, misogyny, arrogance and it comes in a fetid package driving us to the abyss.”

The team is adamant that solutions that do not tackle the underlying drivers of our growth-based economies will only exacerbate the overshoot crisis.

“Everything we know and love is at stake,” says Barnard. “A habitable planet and a peaceful civilisation both have value, and we need to be conscious about using tools in ethical and justice-based ways. This is not just about humanity. This is about every other species on this planet. This is about the future generations.” “I do get frustrated that people sit in paralysis thinking, what do I do? Or what must we do? There are moral hazards everywhere. We have to choose how to intervene to keep us working on a path forward as humanity, because everything right now is set up to strip us of our humanity.”

30) In memory of Barry Commoner.

Barry Commoner was credited as being a founder of the modern environmental movement and was among the world’s best known ecologists in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He was famous for his public campaigns against nuclear testing, chemical pollution and environmental decay.

In 1970, Time featured Commoner on its cover, calling him “The Paul Revere of Ecology” (after the American revolutionary hero Paul Revere, who famously warned the rebel militia about approaching British forces before a decisive battle). Time said he had “probably done more than any other US scientist to speak out and awaken a sense of urgency about the declining quality of life”.

The Australian "Green Left" website published an article when Barry died at 95 in 2012. In this extract from the article they give a nice clear description of his Four Laws of Ecology, which I thought it worthwhile revisiting 12 years later.

"Commoner addressed the environmental crisis and humans and nature’s interaction on many different aspects: including population growth, consumer demand, politics, capitalism, greed, and other factors. He sums it up with this quote:

 In the book, he formulated the Four Laws of Ecology.

The first of these informal laws, Everything is connected to everything else, indicates how ecosystems are complex and interconnected. This complexity and interconnectedness are not like that of the individual organism whose various organs have evolved and have been selected based on their contribution to the survival and fecundity of the whole. Nature is far more complex, variable, and considerably more resilient than the metaphor of the evolution of an individual organism suggests. An ecosystem can lose species and undergo significant transformations without collapsing. Yet, the interconnectedness of nature also means that ecological systems can experience sudden, startling catastrophes if placed under extreme stress. “The system,” Commoner writes, “is stabilized by its dynamic self-compensating properties; these same properties, if overstressed, can lead to a dramatic collapse.” Further, “the ecological system is an amplifier, so that a small perturbation in one place may have large, distant, long-delayed effects elsewhere.”

The second law of ecology, Everything must go somewhere, restates a basic law of thermodynamics: in nature, there is no final waste, matter and energy are preserved, and the waste produced in one ecological process is recycled in another. For instance, a downed tree or log in an old-growth forest is a life source for numerous species and an essential part of the ecosystem. Likewise, animals excrete carbon dioxide into the air and organic compounds into the soil, which helps sustain plants upon which animals will feed.

Nature knows best, the third informal law of ecology, Commoner writes, “holds that any major man-made change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system.” During 5 billion years of evolution, living things developed an array of substances and reactions that together constitute the living biosphere. However, the modern petrochemical industry suddenly created thousands of new substances that did not exist in nature. Based on the same basic carbon chemistry patterns as natural compounds, these new substances enter readily into existing biochemical processes. But they do so in ways that are frequently destructive to life, leading to mutations, cancer, and many different forms of death and disease. “The absence of a particular substance from nature,” Commoner writes, “is often a sign that it is incompatible with the chemistry of life.”

There is no such thing as a free lunch. The fourth informal law of ecology expresses that the exploitation of nature always carries an ecological cost. From a strict ecological standpoint, human beings are consumers more than they are producers. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that in the very process of using energy, human beings “use up” (but do not destroy) energy, in the sense that they transform it into unworkable forms.

For example, in the case of an automobile, the high-grade chemical energy stored in the gasoline that fuels the car is available for useful work while the lower grade thermal energy in the automobile exhaust is not. In any transformation of energy, some of it is always degraded in this way. The ecological costs of production are, therefore, significant.

LOCAL

1) Media article written by CKM member Tom Powell since the last newsletter.

15/10/2023 - Opinion article: Technology to the Rescue

2) CKM submissions.

Tom has continued putting together some excellent submissions that you can view if you are interested.

Regional Hydrogen Transition submission.

In this submission he said - "We have serious concerns with this program and request a change in direction.  We support a subsidy for green hydrogen used in industrial processes and aviation & ship fuel but we do not support the use of green hydrogen for heavy transport. Considering its low efficiency, ready alternatives, lack of infrastructure, explosivity, limited industrial benefit and climate impact of leakage, green hydrogen for transport should not be given preferential price support."

MBIE Interim Hydrogen Roadmap energy strategy submission.

Review of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme submission.

A Redesigned NZ ETS Permanent Forest Category submission.

MDC also recently publicised the second round of public consultation for the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management (NPSFM). This was an opportunity to respond to the proposed values, visions and environmental outcomes as defined after the first round of consultation. Budyong put together a brief submission with an emphasis on our concern that the needs of Nature are given the highest priority when making decisions about our freshwater resource. You can check out the full submission below if interested.

 NPS-FM 2020 Community Engagement - round two submission.

3) Students letters to incoming Prime Minister.

Climate activist group Climate Karanga Marlborough invited Marlborough school pupils to write a letter based on the theme of caring for Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother, to be sent to the incoming prime minister following the General Election.

The aim was to give the citizens of tomorrow the opportunity to voice their ideas in regard to protecting the health and well-being of our environment.

You can read the Stuff article about it and see two of the letters received.

4) Talk at Marlborough Research Centre (MRC).

Paul White and Martin Crundwell from GNS Science are giving a talk at the Marlborough Research Centre on December 11th in the evening. The topic is “Coastal Wairau Plain geological evolution in the last 10,000 years and what this could mean for the future.”

Here is an asbtract of the content of the talk.

“Today’s Lower Wairau Plain (LWP) geology and geomorphology developed (mostly) during two climatic periods: the last glacial (cold) and the current interglacial (warm). This development will be described in a ‘virtual’ tour of today’s LWP geology and with new geological research that models past environments, approximately: 10,000 years ago, as sea level rose rapidly; 6,000 years ago when sea level was probably a little higher than today; and pre-European. LWP geology is a major control on numerous local resources (e.g., groundwater, soils, and rivers). The talk will conclude with geological perspectives on LWP resource futures to 2100.”

When : Monday 11th December 2023, 6:30-8:00 pm
Where : Marlborough Research Centre lecture theatre, Budge Street campus Blenheim
Audience: Open to public – no need to register.

Here also is a link to a powerpoint of some current work they are doing (some of this will be discussed in the above meeting.) In it they make a case that pre-historical (i.e., Holocene) geology is a proxy for climate-change-induced sea level rise to 2100.

Lesley and I met with Paul, Martin and several of their colleagues in May after Paul had contributed to another talk at the MRC, along with James Renwick. Paul had asked to meet with CKM to talk about a project where they are planning to do some research in the Lower Wairau to do with climate change adaptation.

Paul and Martin will be staying on in Marlborough for a few days after their talk and are keen to meet with us again to further discuss this research project. I’m looking for others who will be willing to participate in a meeting. Paul has suggested we could meet anytime on Thursday, Dec 14th or Friday morning, Dec 15th. He says “I’d like to discuss some research ideas that could possibly involve CKM members, if they wish.”                     If anyone is interested please let me know.

5) Letter to MDC Mayor regarding replacement Chief Executive.

We put together a letter which we sent to the mayor. The letter was also supported by Marlborough Forest and Bird. In it we said - "We encourage you to spread your search for a new CEO wider than the places that local bodies might traditionally advertise. Marlborough needs a leader that is fully committed to supporting the transition and shift to a low carbon emissions economy where the needs of the environment are given top priority. He or she will need to inspire existing Marlborough residents and businesses and attract organisations and industry’s into our region that want to help create a thriving, diverse and most importantly, sustainable local economy. An effective CEO needs to lead by example, and show that the visions and values expressed for our  region aren’t just lip-service but are core to all our local decision making."

Check out our full letter if you're interested. In our letter we referred to the Headline Messages of the Dasgupta Report of 2021. Maia Hart also wrote a very good article for Stuff outlining the discussion around the Council table on this issue.

Here is the response received from Nadine. Nadine also told me in conversation at the Environment and Planning Committee meeting recently that she had received a letter with a similar message from local Iwi.

Tēnā korua Budyong and Helen,

Thank you for writing to us and sharing your thoughts on the importance of weighting being given to environmental experience in the selection of our new Chief Executive.
A view I very much agree with. As a Unitary Authority which covers the roles and responsibilities of a Regional Council as well as a Territorial Authority, our new Chief Executive will need to provide leadership across all Council functions and all areas of responsibility. To find such a CE we are undertaking a nationwide search, led by Mike Stenhouse of Shefield Consulting.
Mike is currently drafting the new CE specification documents for Councillors to review, so I have forwarded your letter on to Mike for his reference.
We are very aware the appointment of a new Chief Executive is not only a significant decision for Council, it is also significant for many individuals, organisations, groups and communities within Marlborough – it is a decision all Councillors will be focusing on with great care.

Ngā mihi
Nadine

6) Coastal Water Temperature Trends Report Card 2015 – 2023.

In this report presented to the MDC Environment and Planning Committee on November 16th it states -

• The coastal water quality was monitored monthly at 22 sites across Tōtaranui/Queen Charlotte Sound and Te Hoiere/Pelorus Sound.
• As a result of several remarkably intense heatwaves in the Cook Strait, the Marlborough Sounds have experienced unusually warm ocean temperatures in recent years. Our monitoring data shows that both Pelorus Sound and Queen Charlotte Sound exhibit record-breaking high temperatures in 2022 and 2023.
• Using monitoring data from the past eight years, statistical analysis revealed a highly significant upward trend in water temperatures for especially outer- and mid- Pelorus sites. Moreover, temperature anomaly trends show that most Queen Charlotte Sound sites have warmed significantly from 2015 to 2023.
• Warming temperatures in the Sounds can have devastating effects on marine species and habitats.

Check out the full report on the MDC website. It is item number 3 on the Nov 16th agenda.

Here are some of my reflections after reading the sea temperature report -

• It took many decades of heating due to emissions from fossil fuels being absorbed by our oceans, to result in the extreme marine heatwaves over the last two La Nina years. I'm concerned that the magnitude of issues like this are underplayed.
• It takes 2000 joules to heat 1m3 of air by 1C. It takes 4.2 million joules to heat 1M3 of water by 1C. Without the oceans absorbing 93% of the excess heat due to global heating this planet would be well and truly unliveable. The global average temperature is now 15C. Our planet would be unliveable at 50C average without this ocean heat sink.
• The marine heat waves we are experiencing are warnings. It took decades to get here and it can only get worse. This is basic physics. Turning around this trend is a major challenge for humanity. "The oceans have stored the problem, but it's coming back to bite us!"

Maia Hart also wrote an article published on the RNZ website about the report.

This Guardian article from May 2023 provides a very good overview of the causes and implications of ocean heating.

7) Marlborough Airport (MAL) focus group.

Budyong was invited to join a focus group to share his thoughts about Marlborough Airport and material issues relating to sustainability, now and into the future. The group he joined had two other local people with environmental perspectives, Bev Doole and Helen Ballinger, along with the organiser Stephanie Flores from MDC and resulted in a wide ranging discussion.

If you're interested you can also read a paper Budyong submitted expressing some big picture views consistent with CKM's values.

8) Marlborough business CarbonScape is revolutionising how we produce graphite.

"One Marlborough company is on the path to commercialise a sustainable graphite alternative that overseas companies can use to produce lithium-ion batteries and now a new investment will see them grow their team at home and overseas.
CarbonScape is a business that uses timber and forestry industry by-products and waste to make biographite, a carbon-negative graphite product for EV and grid scale battery supply chains.
They are the first to market this sustainable option and this week the company announced an US$18 million investment led by Stora Enso, a leading provider of renewable products around the world, and Amperex Technology Limited (ATL), a global lithium-ion battery producer and innovator."

Check out the full article on Stuff.

9) Climate Positive grape growing.

This article in the NZ Winegrower magazine looks at the efforts of the Holdaway Family, Lowlands Wines operation to grow climate positive grapes on their land in the Lower Wairau/Dillons Point area.

10) Climate Action Week 2024.

Catherine van der Muelen is all fired up again organising the Climate Action Week activities for next year. It is scheduled to run from February 19 - 24. "Climate Action Week Marlborough has been designed to create awareness, develop our Marlborough business community's knowledge by embracing education, and take action towards creating a low carbon emissions, highly productive, and thriving community, no matter what stage of the journey you are at." 

You can check out the full week agenda and purchase tickets if you're interested.

National

11) Emergency Weather.

Emergency Weather is a new novel  by Tim Jones and is available in bookstores nationwide. The book’s synopsis is: “Three people find themselves in Wellington as the climate crisis crashes into their lives. A giant storm is on its way – what will be left of the city when it’s over?”

Tim is a member of CKM and a key person in the Coal Action Network Aotearoa.

In this article in Newsroom Tim talks about his childhood in Mataura and two of the big floods he experienced there. He says "All my life, Mataura has been living in Nature’s shooting gallery. But as the climate warms and the weather gets more extreme – drier, hotter, wetter, wilder – more and more of us are in the firing line. The cyclone, fuelled by warming seas, that sweeps across your city. The forest slash that slides across the highway at just the wrong time. The exotic forest that, dry and windswept, ignites from a single spark. Beneath it all, the rising of the sea, starting slow and growing faster, raising the baseline of storms. Papatūānuku isn’t to blame. We’re in the world made by the fossil fuel companies, by industrial dairying, by the accumulation of capital at the expense of everything else. Will we act to save ourselves, like the people of Mataura acted, or will we shut our eyes and pretend the danger is not real? Emergency weather is now on every doorstep."

12) Updated forestry regulations increase council controls and require large slash removal.

The outgoing government announced new regulations on October 3rd. I thought it was interesting to note that non-indigenous forests planted for carbon sequestration will now have to be managed in the same way as plantation forests. Hopefully this will survive under the new government.

"Local councils will have more power to decide where new commercial forests – including carbon forests – are located, to reduce impacts on communities and the environment. New national standards give councils greater control over commercial forestry, including clear rules on harvesting practices and new requirements to remove slash from erosion-prone land."

You can check out the full media release on the Beehive website.

13) Recloaking Papatūānuku: A nation-wide indigenous forest initiative.

Once, New Zealand was cloaked in a rich array of indigenous forests, alive with the song of birds, and our rivers and streams ran clear. Yet, since settlement began 800 or so years ago, we have progressively removed 82% of the natural forest cover, destroying the habitat of many plant and animal species, and increasing the vulnerability of our landscapes at great cost to our economy, our biodiversity, and our future.

At the same time we have introduced deliberately or by accident a multitude of invasive plant animal and fungal species that are further impacting our Indigenous biodiversity. And these impacts will only get worse with climate change.

Today, we face a climate and biodiversity crisis. In 2020, Aotearoa’s Government declared a climate emergency, recognising climate change as “one of the greatest challenges of our time”. Since then, the risk of surpassing irreversible climate and ecological tipping points has continued to increase, and we are already witnessing the devastating effects of increasingly frequent and severe weather events, prompting the United Nations Secretary General to announce recently that “the era of global boiling has arrived”.

Despite this alarming context, our current regulatory settings and incentives for mitigating climate change are failing to:
(a) Drive urgent gross emissions reductions at source and at scale;
(b) Secure enduring, biodiverse and resilient long-term carbon sinks for future generations;
(c) Reverse the catastrophic decline of our indigenous flora and fauna;
(d) Protect our freshwater and marine ecosystems;
(e) Encourage land-use diversification over intensification; and
(f) Harness opportunities to weave climate and ecosystem resilience into our landscapes and our communities.

Check out the full proposal on the Pure Advantage website.

14) Methane myths come up against textbook science.

I included an item (#14) in the last newsletter titled "A new paradigm shift, indeed." It was about an article published in the Rural News, which claimed that the climate impact of methane is so low as to be disregarded. The item included a rebuttal written by our own Tom Powell. We've now been informed by one of our members of another very thorough rebuttal published in the Farmers Weekly on November 6th. If you are interested in this discussion the article by Professor Dave Frame from Canterbury University is a must read. I have to say, to see Farmers Weekly publishing such a well written, informed and cogent article on this contentious topic and to know that farmers all over NZ receive this publication presenting them with such good science is encouraging.  All those open minded farmers, of which I'm sure there are many, get the opportunity to make their own decisions about what is myth and what are clear well presented facts.

15) Huge insurance cost increases hit farmers.

This item from the Farmers Weekly is a sobering look at one of the significant consequences of extreme weather events. What impact will this have on the viability of farming operations as we experience more of these major weather events?

Insurance premiums for farmers are going up by as much as 30% after a number of very high-cost adverse weather events in the past year.
FMG, which has a rural market share of about 55%, said Cyclone Gabrielle was the biggest single event in the company’s 118-year history. Dave Kibblewhite, FMG’s chief financial, investment and risk officer, said for Cyclone Gabrielle, reinsurers will be paying approximately 90% of the total claims cost of FMG clients.
“Not only are these weather events from the last year the most significant in our history, but they also coincided with the hardest reinsurance market in over 40 years following a number of large global natural disaster events.
“These factors have resulted in large price increases for reinsurance, in excess of 30%, and also global capacity has been reduced.”
Farmers and orchardists can take small comfort in the knowledge that their premium cost increases are similar to those right across the insurance industry, and in towns and cities.

Check out the full article.

16) IAG says it has paid out more than $1 billion in insurance claims for the North Island floods & Cyclone Gabrielle.

New Zealand's biggest insurer is urging the incoming government to push on with natural hazard risk reduction, climate change adaptation and managed retreat work to help keep insurance available and affordable in the face of stark impacts, and rising costs, from extreme weather and natural hazards.
The previous government last year released NZ's first national adaptation plan, which set out that the Ministry for the Environment and Treasury would lead a programme of work on how NZ meets the costs of climate change and invests in resilience. Banks have told a subsequent parliamentary inquiry into climate adaptation that insurance withdrawal would leave them with stark options.

Check out the full article on the interest.co website.

17) Climate Action Tracker (CAT) NZ rating for climate action.

I thought with a new government taking over the reins of power that it would be an appropriate time to review the current assessment for NZ on the Climate Action Tracker website. This assessment was released in March this year and a new one is due soon. As we can expect our climate policies to be watered down with the new government we can also expect our rating to get worse.

Overall rating -
The CAT rates New Zealand’s climate targets, policies and finance as “Highly insufficient”. The “Highly insufficient” rating indicates that New Zealand’s climate policies and commitments are not stringent enough to limit warming to 1.5°C and need substantial improvements. New Zealand’s NDC target is rated “Critically insufficient” when compared with its fair share contribution to climate action and “Insufficient” when compared to modelled domestic pathways. Its policies and action do not put it on track to meet this target and its climate finance is inadequate. New Zealand should increase both its emissions reduction target and climate policies, and provide additional, predictable, finance to others to meet its fair share contribution.

Policies and action against modelled domestic pathways -
New Zealand’s current policies are “Highly insufficient” when compared to modelled domestic pathways. The “Highly insufficient” rating indicates that New Zealand’s policies and action in 2030 are not at all consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C. If all countries were to follow New Zealand’s approach, warming could reach over 3°C and up to 4°C.

You can check out the full report on the CAT website.

GLOBAL

18) COP-out: Why the petrostate-hosted climate talkfest will fail.

"After a succession of record-breaking months of record heat including 1.8°C in September, global warming for 2023 as a whole will likely tip 1.5°C, with 2024 even hotter as the effect of the building El Nino is felt more fully. Already hundreds of thousands have died and millions displaced, primarily in countries least responsible for climate change. The annual economic cost globally is in the hundreds of billions. So what will the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), starting 30 November in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), say about this? And in particular what will Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the UAE state oil company ADNOC, who will preside over the international negotiations, say? Probably nothing; instead there will be much blather about reaffirming the commitments at the Paris COP in 2015 “to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. And lots of “net zero” posturing based on sham Integrated Assessment Models, and farcical assumptions about bodgy carbon offsets, carbon capture and storage (CCS), bioenergy with CCS, machines to draw carbon from the atmosphere, and the like. All given unwarranted credibility by the Sultan’s advisers, Mckinsey & Co.

Many of the petrostates are highly dependent on fossil fuel revenue to fund their strategic ambitions, so there is every reason to believe they will pump all the oil and gas they can. So it is unsurprising that a new UN report says the world is heading towards 3°C and perhaps a good deal more, bringing down the curtains on contemporary civilisation. Eight years after Paris, the evidence is overwhelming that “net zero 2050” was always a bad target, that there is no carbon budget left, and that major system tipping points have already been passed, or are now within range in the short-term. COP28 will not produce a statement that says a word about any of this. If there is to be a modicum of truth-telling, front and centre of the COP outcome would be recognition that fossil fuel expansion is a death trap, that zero emissions fast is absolutely necessary, and that unprecedented interventions to mitigate 1.5°C climate overshoot are now required. That is the focus of another new report The Overshoot: Crossing the 1.5C threshold and finding our way back, from the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. The report again emphasises the need for a three-pronged strategy to reduce, remove and repair.

In the Gulf, petrostates are now installing floodlights on beaches and encouraging night-time use because it is simply becoming too hot to use during the day. “In a city where weather that would constitute a deadly heat wave in Europe is just a typical summer day, official ‘night beaches’ have become a popular way to cool down”, reports the New York Times. Perhaps the COP delegates could adjourn for a midnight skinny dip, and experience first-hand what the future holds."

Check out the full article from David Spratt and Ian Dunlop on the Pearls and Irritations website.

19) Inside the new climate assault on the oil majors.

Climate litigation against American Oil Majors is being taken on by bigger legal firms in the US. Firms that have large war chests after winning cases against big pharmaceutical firms over their role in the US opioid abuse crisis.

"The infernal heat that began killing people in the normally temperate north-west of the United States in June 2021 began with unusually heavy rain over China, which drove energy into the jet stream which crosses the Pacific and set off a cascading set of climatic events resulting in a heat dome that settled across parts of the US and Canada. In Multnomah County, Oregon, temperatures reached 42 degrees Celsius, 44.5 degrees and 46.6 degrees over successive days. Before that week began, the county’s record temperature was 41.6 degrees, and its average high temperature was just 21 degrees. By the time it subsided, the heat had killed 69 people. At the time an event like it was inconceivable. But due to rapid global warming, it is predicted similar heatwaves will strike the region once a decade or so.
Climate litigation is increasing around the world, but the Multnomah case is attracting significant attention.

How these cases will play out is not yet clear, but in April, some of the jurisdictions bringing them had a win when the US Supreme Court ruled that they should remain in state courts, where they are thought to have more chance of success than in federal courts. Kysar says the (oil) companies are drafting an “army” of lawyers to fight every case in every jurisdiction around the world because “every one of them feels like an existential threat” to the industry. In Ango-American political systems, governments are constrained from taking overarching action, he says. The trade-off is that when people are injured, courts can intervene.
“That means when there’s some big social harm that’s not being addressed, people turn to the courts, and the courts have to give an answer.
“You could call your MP 100 times a day and say ‘I’m worried about climate’, they might never call you back.”

Cases like this one have the potential to have significant impacts on the major oil companies. Check out the full article on the Sydney Morning Herald website.

20) Ban private jets to address climate crisis, says Thomas Piketty.

"Questions of social and economic class must be at the centre of our response to the climate crisis, to address the huge inequalities between the carbon footprints of the rich and poor and prevent a backlash against climate policies, the economist Thomas Piketty has said. Regulations will be needed to outlaw goods and services that have unnecessarily high greenhouse gas emissions, such as private jets, outsized vehicles, and flights over short distances, he said in an interview with the Guardian. Rich countries must also put in place progressive carbon taxes that take into account people’s incomes and how well they are able to reduce their emissions, as current policies usually fail to adjust for people’s real needs. “We have to put class and the studies of inequality between social classes right at the centre of our analyses of environmental challenges in general,” Piketty said. “If you don’t, you will just not be able to get a majority [of people in favour of strong action] and will not be able to make it.”

Check out the full article.

21) EU to criminalise severe environmental harms "Comparable to Ecocide".

"The EU has agreed to enshrine in law a new offence that aims to punish the most serious crimes against the environment. The final text emerged following several months of negotiation (“trilogues”) between the European Council, Commission and Parliament considering, inter alia, the establishment of a “qualified offence” aimed at preventing and punishing the gravest environmental harms including, as the accompanying recitals specify, “cases comparable to ecocide”.

Check our the full report on the Ecocide website.

22) Hydrogen Leakage: A potential risk for the hydrogen economy.

Here are three items to contribute to the ongoing material I've included in the last few newsletter regarding the pros and cons of hydrogen as a GHG free fuel. This first one highlights that hydrogen leaking into our atmosphere does have an indirect climate forcing.

"Hydrogen is expected to play a key role in the decarbonization of the energy system. As of June 2022, more than 30 hydrogen strategies and roadmaps have been published by governments around the world. Hydrogen has been identified as a potential safety issue based on the fact that it is the smallest molecule that exists and can easily pass through materials. To date, however, very little attention has been paid to the potential contribution of hydrogen leakage to climate change, driven by hydrogen’s indirect global warming effect through mechanisms that extend the lifetime of methane and other greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere (Paulot et al. 2012; Derwent et al. 2020). A literature analysis turns up very little data on hydrogen leakage along the existing value chain, and that which does exist comes from theoretical assessments, simulation, or extrapolation rather than measures from operations. As the production methods and uses of hydrogen evolve over time, there is even less data available on what could represent key parts of the hydrogen economy going forward. In the future, leaked hydrogen will likely be concentrated in a few key processes (e.g., green hydrogen production, delivery, road transport, and chemical production). There is a risk of increased leakage rates in the future mostly because the leaking processes that will be key by 2050 do not exist at scale today. A high-risk scenario based on hydrogen demand from the International Energy Agency (IEA) net-zero scenario (528 million tons [Mt] by 2050) (IEA 2021) could potentially lead to a 5.6 percent economy-wide leakage rate, compared with an estimated 2.7 percent in 2020."

Check out the full research paper for more info.

23) Plastic Waste Becomes Clean Hydrogen Goldmine.

"A technique called flash joule heating at Rice University can convert plastic waste, even unsorted and unwashed, into clean hydrogen and valuable graphene. If sold at just 5% of its market value, the graphene produced could make the hydrogen essentially free, provided the process is powered by renewable energies. While green hydrogen offers significant potential for decarbonization, especially in high-heat industrial applications, its production requires vast amounts of clean energy, necessitating a balanced approach to its adoption."

Tom's comments - Sounds interesting.  I’ll wait to hear what the fishhooks are, though.  I would imagine there would be lots of “interesting” waste products from such a process - gases and solids.

Check out the full article if you want to learn more.

24) Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European households self-sufficient.

"One of the biggest issues with solar energy is that it is inconsistent over days and over seasons. Many startups have focused on trying to smooth energy supply over the day — saving up energy during the day for use during the night-time or outside peak hours. But few have tackled interseasonal storage of solar energy. What if homes could save abundant solar energy created in sunny months to be used for heat and electricity in winter? So far, this vision has been impossible to achieve. Batteries are too expensive and have short lifespans, and high costs and poor efficiency have crossed hydrogen, which does not emit greenhouse gases when burned, off the list of solutions.
Now, one startup from Norway — a country in a region that probably hopes it could save a little sunlight for cold winters — says it could bring a solution to market in the next couple of years, using solid hydrogen."

Check out the full article on the Sifted website.

25) To Understand and Protect the Home Planet.

This is the title of a blog published by James Hansen on October 27th. I have had a longtime respect for the perspectives presented by James and his willingness to present a contrary view from the IPCC reports is a reflection of his independent view. There are sure to be those who dispute the conclusions of him and his team. For readers of this newsletter who have studied reports from James Hansen before you will know that they are technical so it is just for nerds who want to get into the nitty gritty of the science. The new paper he is talking about is titled "Global Warming in the Pipeline". He says in the blog -

"GLOBAL WARMING IN THE PIPELINE will be published in Oxford Open Climate Change of Oxford University Press next week. The paper describes an alternative perspective on global climate change – alternative to that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which provides scientific advice on climate change to the United Nations.
Our paper may be read as being critical of IPCC. But we have no criticism of individual scientists, who include world-leading researchers volunteering their time to produce IPCC reports. Rather we are questioning whether the IPCC procedure and product yield the advice that the public, especially young people, need to understand and protect their home planet.
Discussion of our paper will likely focus on differences between our conclusions and those of IPCC. I hope, however, that it may lead to consideration of some basic underlying matters."

Here is the full blog for those interested. It is not long and gives you a good summary of the content of the paper.

This YouTube video is a 43 minute discussion about the paper between James and Paul Beckwith, another climate scientist. If you are like me and really want to get down to some of the nitty gritty of why 2023 is now the hottest year in the last 100,000 years then this video is a must to listen and watch.

For the real nerds the paper is available on the Oxford Open Climate Change website.

Alternatively you can read a subsequent blog from James on November 10th titled "How We Know that Global Warming is Accelerating and that the Goal of the Paris Agreement is Dead", which gives a good overview of the science in the paper.

26) Hallucinatory world: Governments blind as multiple catastrophes besiege human civilisation.

• Life on Earth is under siege. A chain of tipping points with catastrophic consequences for everyone are being unleashed.
• Yet governments worldwide remain indifferent to the danger. Indeed, many continue avidly to stoke the very furnaces that will consume our civilisation.

The first two statements above are from two new scientific reports, issued this week – one from the United Nations and another from the same group of 15,000 scientists who gave us the world climate warning in 2020. Yet governments globally didn’t bat an eyelid. It was as if they do not occupy the same planet as the rest of us, but some hallucinatory world where everything is fine."

You can read the full article on the Pearls and Irritations website.



FUTURE OPTIONS?

I have added an extra section to this newsletter. It is focussed on discussion about alternatives to the dominant Capitalist Growth economy. I think this quote from Donella Meadows, one of the original authors of the 1972 "Limits to Growth" report says it all really.


























26) "Beyond Growth" Conference.

I participated (online) in an excellent conference held in Wellington over the weekend of September 16/17. The topic was "Beyond Growth" and the people from the "Degrowth NZ" group who organised it put together some thoroughly interesting and stimulating sessions with some excellent speakers. All the sessions are available on their YouTube channel.

I recommend the opening talk from Sahra Kress. The first session "Beyond Growth - what can we learn from the International Movement?" was good value, in particular the contributions from Mike Joy (session 1.3) and Timothee Parrique (1.2). Also the session with Prof Jonathon Boston (3.2).
The afternoon session "How do we mainstream degrowth in NZ" is worth checking out. It was very interesting to hear the views of the three business people involved as it was clear they consider the current economic model is not sustainable. (sessions 4.1 - 4.5.)
Others worthwhile sessions were the presentations by Nate Hagens (1.1) and Rick Williment (5.1). 

There is plenty of other good stuff to explore if you're interested in the topic.

27) Reconsidering our Economic System.

Dr Catherine Knight also did a session (3.1) at the Beyond Growth conference. This RNZ interview with her is worth a listen.

28) Vaclav Smil: ‘Growth must end. Our economist friends don’t seem to realise that’.

I recommend this interview between Jonathon Watts and the author Vaclav Smil about his latest book "Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities." – an epic, multidisciplinary analysis of growth – and why humanity’s endless expansion must stop.

Here is his first question - "You are the nerd’s nerd. There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like you. You dug up the astonishing statistic that China has poured more cement every three years since 2003 than the US managed in the entire 20th century. You calculated that in 2000, the dry mass of all the humans in the world was 125m metric tonnes compared with just 10m tonnes for all wild vertebrates. And now you explore patterns of growth, from the healthy development of forests and brains to the unhealthy increase in obesity and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Before we get into those deeper issues, can I ask if you see yourself as a nerd?"

Check out the full Guardian article.

29) Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable.

This article by Mike Joy with input by Jack Santa Barbara provides an excellent, well explained description of the state of overshoot humanity has created - "The climate crisis is seen as a problem requiring a solution rather than a symptom of overshoot. The problem is generally formulated as looking for a way to maintain current lifestyles in the wealthy world, rather than reducing overshoot. The ecological perspective accepts that we exceed biophysical boundaries and emphasises the importance of reducing energy and material consumption – regardless of how the energy is provided.
The scope of human disruption of the biosphere is now global. This ecological perspective highlights the current magnitude and closeness of significant and unwelcome changes to Earth systems. The reduction of humanity’s demands on the biosphere is an overriding priority.
Ecological economics, with its emphasis on a steady-state economy, is perhaps the most rigorous existing economic framework with specific proposals for determining priority actions. We urge scholars of all disciples to examine these."

Check out the full article in the Conversation.

30) Richest 1% emit as much planet-heating pollution as two-thirds of humanity.

This report released by Oxfam on November 20th highlights the theme of this extra section. Those of us in the developed world need to consume much less - some of us a lot more than others!

•     Carbon emissions of richest 1 percent surged to 16 percent of world’s total CO2 emissions in 2019.
•     Their carbon emissions are enough to cause 1.3 million excess deaths due to heat.
•     Unequal countries suffer seven times more flood fatalities than more equal countries.
•     Fairly taxing the super-rich would help curb both climate change and inequality.

The richest 1 percent of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 than the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds of humanity, reveals a new Oxfam report. It comes ahead of the UN climate summit in Dubai, amid growing fears that the 1.5°C target for curtailing rising temperatures appears increasingly unachievable. These outsized emissions of the richest 1 percent will cause 1.3 million heat-related excess deaths, roughly equivalent to the population of Dublin, Ireland. Most of these deaths will occur between 2020 and 2030.

“The super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction, leaving humanity choking on extreme heat, floods and drought,” said Oxfam International interim Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
“For years we’ve fought to end the era of fossil fuels to save millions of lives and our planet. It’s clearer than ever this will be impossible until we, too, end the era of extreme wealth,” said Behar.

Check out the full article on the Oxfam website.

31) New Paper Identifies ‘Behavioural Crisis’ Driving Overshoot.

Ground-breaking academic paper, led by a New Zealand conservationist, reveals the behavioural crisis driving anthropogenic ecological overshoot and immediate actions needed.

A ground-breaking peer-reviewed paper has been published today (20/09/2023) by a collection of well-known scientists, academics and behavioural science practitioners led by New Zealand-based conservationist, Joseph Merz, of the Merz Institute.

The paper, published by Sage on 20 September 2023, details how our modern human behaviour is causing us to consume our natural resources at rates faster than they can be replenished, while also creating waste in excess of what the Earth can assimilate. The authors name and frame this existential threat the “Human Behavioural Crisis” and propose that the crisis, which stems from maladaptive human behaviours, be recognised globally as a critical intervention point for tackling ecological overshoot (and its symptoms like climate change).

The authors, led by Merz, demonstrate that our previously adaptive human impulses have been exploited for-profit to the point that the resultant behaviours have become extremely maladaptive, threatening complex life on Earth.

You can read the full media release on the Merz Institute website.

LOCAL

1) Media articles written by CKM member Tom Powell since the last newsletter.

17/05/2023 - Opinion article: The Newest thing - Tesla Bashing.

28/07/2023 - Opinion article: Taking out the Greenwash.

2) Assessing Marlborough’s landslide risk.

A report was presented at the July MDC Environment and Planning Committee meeting.

“Weather events in 2021 and 2022 caused major environmental and property damage as well as significant trauma to residents. A detailed report prepared by GNS Science presented to Council’s Environment and Planning Committee illustrated the number of landslides and looked at ways of improving landslide hazard management in future.

Environmental Scientist Matt Oliver said the report had significant implications for how Council managed things going forward. Mr Oliver said work in the Marlborough Sounds following the storms had been challenging. “The level of damage to property as well as the human trauma sits heavily with me,” he said. “The rainfall from both storms caused significant property damage and disruption to people’s lives.”

Following the storm events and landslide related reports received in past years, it seemed such phenomena were a common hazard in the Marlborough Sounds landscape, he said. With increased intensity and frequency of storms forecast under climate change, the GNS report recommended Council investigate landslides further as part of a natural hazards programme.”

The full report can be seen on the MDC website - July 13th meeting - Item 3.

Marlborough floods a year on; new report suggests human behavior a major cause - It is also worthwhile listening to Kathryn Ryan's interview on RNZ with Matt Oliver, environmental scientist at MDC and Kenepuru Heads farmer Emma Hopkinson.

3) Wairau Aquifer science & management update for Climate Karanga Marlborough.

Dave, Don, Pete and Budyong had a two hour meeting at MDC offices on Wednesday, August 23rd. Peter Davidson, MDC Groundwater Scientist organised the meeting to give us a presentation bringing us up to date on the latest research about the aquifer and its decline and sharing some of their thinking about how they might better manage the water allocations being extracted from the aquifer. Other staff attending were Pere Hawes, Sarah Pearson and Clementine (Clem) Rankin. I have put together this report using the material from the presentation for anyone interested in this topic.

4) Friends of Nelson Haven and Tasman Bay Annual Report.

This report has a range of interesting information relevant to Marlborough and in particular to the Marlborough Sounds for anyone interested.

5) Marlborough Biodiversity Forum.

The theme for the forum meeting in May was "Dramatic weather events - Effects on biodiversity and mitigation measures." I wanted to highlight some important thoughts shared that day.

"Resilience means more that stability. It's the ability of an ecosystem to return to its original state following a disturbance or other perturbation."

Te Korowai - An Ecosystem approach.

• We can't keep on doing one thing at a time.
• We can't regard humans as outside of the ecosystem.
• We have to face up to the responsibility of being part of the ecosystem.
• We are neither bystanders nor architects we have to be kaitiaki.
• We all need to give something.
• We need to have a philosophy of gifts and gains where each shareholder group has gifted concessions to sustain us all in the future.
• We need to plan for the great grand children.
• Keep talking, keep listening, keep sharing.

NATIONAL

6) Inquiry into community-led retreat.

The Minister for Climate Change has asked the Parliamentary Environment Committee to open an inquiry into community-led retreat and adaptation funding. You can download from the MfE website, the "Community-led retreat and adaptation funding issues and options" paper and the "Report of the Expert Working Group on managed retreat".

In the media release from the Beehive the Minister for Climate Change James Shaw said “Severe weather events such as Cyclone Gabrielle cause immense damage. Climate change is likely to bring more frequent and more severe events in the future. Decisions we take now, about how to prepare and adapt, will have a lasting legacy. Community-led retreat is a carefully planned process, that can mean anything from relocating homes, to cultural sites, to playgrounds, out of harm’s way, before a severe event, like a flood, happens. I have asked the Environment Committee to hold an inquiry so we can hear a broad range of views on how to develop an enduring system. An inquiry would explore how community-led retreat, including communities choosing to relocate away from areas of high risk, could become part of our adaptation system, and how the costs could be met.”

7) The planet is on fire. Are the Chrises not listening?

Will 'bread and butter' solutions or a Ministry of Hunting and Fishing help save our children's future? As global warming tips into global boiling, Dame Anne Salmond asks if our leaders are honest and long-sighted, or cynical and expedient.

Check out the full article on the Newsroom website.

8) Pumped Hydro – It’s already built!

The Sustainable Energy Forum Inc. (SEF) recently sent an Open Letter to the Minister of Energy and Resources the Hon Dr Megan Woods, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton, the Energy spokespersons of all parliamentary parties and copied to representatives of the media.

In the letter they said - "The mission of SEF is to assist “Facilitating the use of energy for economic, environmental, and social sustainability”. As such, we feel compelled to contribute vital information to the currently unfocused and unproductive discussion around the New Zealand Battery Lake Onslow project, and the proper application of pumped hydro technology within a future-proof New Zealand electricity system.  The consensus among SEF members, many of which have decades of electrical, structural, environmental or civil engineering expertise, is that pumped hydro energy storage is a highly valuable and important technology for a sustainable New Zealand energy future, but that the current NZ Battery Project proposal for Lake Onslow is woefully inadequate, ill-targeted, and above all - obsolete. The project should therefore be abandoned sooner rather than later, as it is unfitting and too expensive to provide electricity back-up for genera on shortfalls occurring on the decade scale. All other features expected from Lake Onslow, including buffer and back-up capacity for the integration of more intermittent renewable genera on and price peak modulation ability, can alternatively be provided from New Zealand’s already built, tested, but unused pump hydro scheme on the Pukaki-Tekapo canal.

We trust that this SEF contribution will add value to the discussions and the decision making process around the future of pumped hydro energy storage in New Zealand."

You can download a copy of the full letter from the Scoop website if interested.

9) NZ Battery Project update.

The August newsletter from the NZ Battery Project states that the MBIE team is seriously looking at a “portfolio” option for back up electrical power during a “dry year”, when hydro-generation is not expected to meet power demand, along with the here-to-for favoured option of a $16 billion pumped hydro scheme at Lake Onslow in Central Otago.  The portfolio option would include biomass and geothermal energy and possibly other sources that the energy market might provide.

There is no mention of the above mentioned Pukaki/Tekapo option. Tom makes the following comments in that regard.

"It apparently has a generation potential of only 90 MW.  It could be part of a wider portfolio of energy projects, though.  With National coming out against Lake Onslow, I think this is the direction the government is heading (toward the Portfolio option, rather than Lake Onslow). Even if it isn’t part of the NZ Battery Project, it has merit just stabilising prices on the wholesale electricity market, as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) has pointed out.  As the nation develops more intermittent renewables, there is going to be greater need for energy storage.  And, given the huge difference in present wholesale electricity prices between peak usage in the mornings and evenings and overnight, there is an opportunity for companies to make money on pumped hydro storage alone."

The newsletter also announced that energy storage in green hydrogen will not be progressed further for Crown investment.

You can read more about the NZ Battery Project and a full copy of the MBIE August E-news can be downloaded on their website.
 
10) Closed loop pumped hydro.

This news release for a journal article on closed loop pumped hydro, energy storage is from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US. It is closed loop because it is separate from the traditional river dams.  The article suggests that closed loop hydro has the least lifecycle emissions of four other large scale energy storage options they investigated. Three battery technologies and compressed air.
Some type of energy storage is needed to make intermittent renewable power, such as wind, tidal and solar, viable and in New Zealand’s deregulated power market, it would help to stabilise peak power prices.  Cheap night-time power could be used to pump water up hill and then be available for the morning and evening power usage peaks.  There will be the usual environmental problems with building and flooding upper and lower reservoirs, however.

11) Te Waikoropupū Springs Water Conservation Order.

I wanted to include this item because I see it as being an important legal precedent that the WCO supports the applicants submission that the Springs have a sacredness that is unique and spiritually renewing and hence outstanding. I have included a statement below from the "Save Our Springs" (SOS) group.

"The recommended Water Conservation Order (WCO) for Te Waikoropupū Springs has just been finalised and sent by the Environment Court to the Government. This is a major step forward in the campaign to protect the Springs. The full Recommended Order is publicly available from the Environment Court website.  It’s important to understand that the WCO process is not yet complete. There are fifteen working days in which a legal challenge to the draft can be made; i.e. by the 18th of August.  Assuming it is not appealed, it usually goes to Parliamentary Counsel Office for checking; then the Minister for the Environment – assuming he agrees – will recommend to the Governor-General that it be adopted.

One exciting part of the recommended draft is that the Court has officially accepted SOS’s spiritual evidence.  Marion Sanson, from our Committee, and I brought evidence that Te Waikoropupū Springs have ‘Outstanding Spiritual Characteristics’ for Pākehā (non-Māori). Ngāti Tama had already proven that the Springs have ‘Outstanding Spiritual Characteristics’ for the Māori people. This means it has now been legally proven that Te Waikoropupū Springs have ‘Outstanding Spiritual Characteristics’ for all visitors. This strengthens the grounds for the ongoing protection of the Springs. During Save Our Springs' (SOS’s) final submissions, the group's lawyer Sally Gepp asked the Court to formally record their response to our evidence. They have done so. Here is their response (from paragraph 54):    

“We accept the evidence of Mr Moran and Ms Sanson on these matters. They explained how they find the Springs to have a sacredness that is unique and spiritually renewing and hence outstanding. In essence, their experience was that the subject waters are extraordinary in those terms. Those are of course personal experiences. Nevertheless, our site visits enabled us to appreciate how the special qualities of the Springs include the way people experience them as spiritually rejuvenating and renewing. It is associated with the vibrancy and purity of the waters in their peaceful setting. We adjudge that the Springs have outstanding spiritual values.” This is an epic moment for the campaign. It is the first time the Environment Court has accepted a waterway as having ‘Outstanding Spiritual Characteristics.’ It thus creates legal precedence. I’m especially happy for the Mohua (Golden Bay) community who can now say their local springs have been legally acknowledged as having ‘Outstanding Spiritual Characteristics;’ i.e. that they can be experienced as Sacred."

Here is an extract from a further letter received from SOS on Augusty 22nd.

Friday, the 18th of August, was the cut-off day to appeal the Te Waikoropupū Water Conservation Order (WCO). There can now be NO APPEAL to the High Court. No appeal is very, very good news! The WCO now needs to be checked by the Environment Ministry. When this is complete the Environment Minister, David Parker, will (hopefully) give it the thumbs up. It then goes to the Governor General to be signed into law. This process takes time. SOS’s priority is that the Te Waikoropupū Springs Water Conservation Order be passed into law before the election.

The WCO ensures that the kaitiaki, Manawhenua Ki Mohua, will be working equitably alongside the Tasman District Council to protect the springs. The equal involvement of the kaitiaki is vital for the long-term protection of the springs. With this in mind, we are concerned a National/Act party coalition government could endanger the WCO. We want to make certain this does not happen. This week we will be contacting David Parker asking that passing the WCO into law before the election be given a high priority. We will also send an open letter to the Minister with media cc’d in. We will note that the Court, in the concluding paragraph of its report, asked the Minister to promulgate the WCO at the earliest possible opportunity.   

12) Beyond Growth Aotearoa conference - Sep  16-17.

This information comes from Degrowth Aotearoa. They say - 

"Following the successful European Beyond Growth 2023 Conference, we are ready to continue this kōrero in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This interactive event will provide a forum to share the latest knowledge and insights related to ecological economics, resource scarcity and the planned response measures that could be taken to strengthen resilience and maximise future opportunities.

Day 1 will cover opportunities and challenges at a systems level, Te Ao Māori perspectives, government policy and business strategies.

Day 2 will explore practical action drawing on community, local government and ethical, circular business perspectives.  

There will be opportunities to network with experts, peers, and decision-makers faced with similar challenges."

If you are interested to attend you can book tickets here.

13) F&B Room for Rivers national campaign.

As a follow up to the item in the last newsletter about this topic you can also listen to a good informative interview on RNZ. The F&B Freshwater Advocate Tom Kay has been traveling around NZ giving presentations to local bodies and communities and was interviewed about this on the Saturday Morning show.

14) A new paradigm shift, indeed.

Tom Powell wrote a rebuttal article to the Rural News publication, following a member’s alert to an article published on 1 August (Could the paradigm be shifting?) which claimed that the climate impact of methane is so low as to be disregarded.  This would be welcome news to the farming community if it were true but an examination of the claim shows it not to be.  The claim was made by an American physicist on a road tour of New Zealand, based upon a research paper by a pair of climate scientists in North America. 
 
The research paper in question was never peer-reviewed, which is standard procedure for scientific research, and so there is no way to verify its findings.  In addition, the paper was published by an avowed climate sceptic organisation, making it more suspect.
Beyond the science, Tom points out that the paradigm is changing but not how the author expects.  Overseas markets are demanding that exporters reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, so reducing emissions is not just good for the environment, it is good for business too.

You can read the full rebuttal article on our website. If you're interested in more detailed information check out this document with the initial research done by Tom.

15) New emissions reduction plan will future-proof NZ’s largest export sector.

This is the headline from the recent media release from the Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor. It's a big claim and I personally think it will need a lot more than this to future proof our largest export sector, but after much talking and consulting a step has been taken towards trying to address this very difficult issue. We will have to wait until after the election to know if it has any meaning. The Hipkin’s government with this announcement of their agriculture emissions reduction plan are moving ahead with He Waka Eke Noa but have delayed it to the last quarter of 2024 (for reporting) and 2025 (for levys) rather than the 1 January, 2024 dates in the Climate Change Response Act (CCRA.)
According to Tom, our CKM expert on the ETS, it is a good outcome that on farm sequestration will go through the ETS, rather than be a discount on the methane levy. He says the fact the government are selling this partly based upon the emissions reduction requirements of overseas buyers is a paradigm shift, indeed.

Check out the full media release for more info.
 
16) A Redesigned NZ ETS Permanent Forest Category.

In this consultation, the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) asked how to define “permanent forests” and what tree types should qualify for permanent forests.  Permanent forests are those planned to last more than 50 years and never be clear cut.  The MfE consulted on this topic last year but realised that the issue was more complex than anticipated and the responses from submitters didn’t give them a clear way forward. In this consultation they ask for definitions and rules for permanent forests, as well as how to manage “transition forests”, which are forests planted in fast growing exotic trees (such as radiata pine) in order to earn carbon credits quickly and then, as the exotic trees age and reach maturity, replace them with indigenous and more long lived trees. 
 
CKM’s submission stressed the importance of indigenous forest as habitat for wildlife and protection against erosion.  We also stressed the importance of drought, disease and wildfire resistance and non-wilding tree types.  We argued against wilding and fire prone species like radiata. We supported mechanisms that would incentivise indigenous forests in the early years after planting, so as to offset the incentive to plant exotics and attempt to transition these forests to indigenous forests later.  On the other hand, we supported the imposition of strict management regimes and accountability for transition forests.

Our full submission is available on our website.

17) Review of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme.

In this consultation, the MfE asked how forestry should be “disincentivised” in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) so that the abatement of gross greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., those from the burning of fossil fuel) are prioritised in the coming decade.  Right now in the ETS, gross emissions can be offset one-for-one by credits for carbon sequestered in forests. The Climate Change Commission has pointed out that the existing high price of carbon credits has incentivised the planting of new forests and within a decade a surplus in forestry credits will drive the price of carbon credits too low to incentivise continued reduction in gross emissions by industry.   In other words, there will be so many forestry carbon credits around, that the carbon credit price on the ETS will drop and industries will simply buy cheap credits rather than upgrade their processes to emit less greenhouse gas.
 
The MfE gave 4 options for reforming the ETS with respect to forestry credits.  CKM’s submission supported the option to remove forestry credits entirely from the ETS and set a separate price for those credits.  This option aligns with the Climate Change Commission’s advice and will give government better control over its acclaimed goal of “right tree, right place”.  This option also allows for different prices for different types of forests – i.e., a premium could be paid for indigenous forests and enhanced protection of biodiversity, over exotic forests.
 
Our full submission is available on our website.

18) Government partners with more industrial users to lower emissions.

Below is an extract from a recent media release from the Beehive -

"Minister of Energy and Resources, Dr Megan Woods, has today announced support for 17 industrial energy users to help them stop using fossil fuels faster through the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) Fund.

“We are seeing some of the country’s largest food processors and manufacturers, like Alliance and Open Country Dairy, make further commitments on multiple, large decarbonisation projects at the same time. There is real momentum building in pushing fossil fuels out of the energy system and lowering emissions through renewables and energy efficiency. We’ve come a long way in the last three years GIDI has been operating. Aside from our large partnership agreements with NZ Steel and Fonterra, this is the largest allocation of GIDI: Industrial funding to date. Businesses from one end of New Zealand to the other are stepping up to the challenge of lowering their emissions. The projects announced today will reduce carbon emissions by 67,300 tonnes each year, which is equal to taking approximately 25,000 cars off the road. That’s a great result for the environment and helping us meet our climate goals,” Megan Woods said.

“New Zealanders and export markets want lower-carbon products and services, and GIDI support is helping them switch sooner to low emission options, proving again that businesses don’t have to deindustrialise, to decarbonise."
Round 5 of GIDI commits $33.3 million in government investment and leverages private funding of over $62 million.

19) Transition HQ.

In 2018, Grant Symons and Fiona van Petegem were introduced by Professor Susan Krumdieck at the University of Canterbury. She was developing a branch of engineering called transition engineering, an emerging interdisciplinary methodology of large-scale systems change that would facilitate a future state of reduced emissions, materials and energy use. Grant and Fiona saw how essential Susan’s research was and understood that it urgently needed to be shared with the public in an accessible way. Drawing on Grant’s background in strategy, project and change management and organisational capability development, and Fiona’s background in engineering, manufacturing and process engineering, they created Transition-HQ. It became a registered company in New Zealand in 2019 and has been steadily growing ever since.

While there is much debate about what New Zealand’s future could and should be, what is still missing from the larger conversation is how we do the work of innovating, engineering, and enabling the real transition.

You can learn more about Transition HZ on their website. I was interested to read an item titled Magic Blue Droplet from their recent newsletter written by Grant. He puts into context and gives us all a timely reminder of the life giving role water plays on our planet and how critical it is for us to protect that water.

GLOBAL

20) Global fight to end fossil fuels.

Here is some info about a global action happening in September.

On September 15 to 17, millions of people around the world will take to the streets to demand a rapid, just, and equitable end to fossil fuels.
This wave of global mobilisations will include the March to #EndFossilFuels fast, fast, forever in New York City on September 17, as world leaders attend the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Ambition Summit. This is a call to solidarity with Indigenous and First Nations across the world who have been fighting the deadly fossil fuel industry and its enablers for decades.

We need all hands on deck to keep building a fossil fuel-free world: youth activists, civil society organisations, social movements, feminist and migrant rights groups, trade unions, faith institutions, academic centres, health institutions, families and peoples of all genders and backgrounds, everywhere, all voices matter!

21) Global Workshops organised by Climate Action Network.

This information has come through from the Climate Action Network office in Kenya. These workshops could be worthwhile for anyone interested in these two topics. The eastern time works best for us here in NZ, as we are 12 hours later than the notified time (i.e., 6:00 am UTC on 28 August is 6:00pm NZ time 28 August).   
Zoom links are provided, so there appears to be no need to register.

We are pleased to invite you to two consultative workshops on Green Hydrogen and Critical Minerals on Monday 28th and Tuesday 29th August 2023. Eastern and Western times are available for both.
 
These workshops are aimed to facilitate network-wide discussions on these two key and timely subjects, ahead of consultations and further progress on a comprehensive energy package of asks/demands, particularly at COP28.
 
Please find below the schedule of the workshops:
 
Green Hydrogen Workshops

Eastern Time: Monday 28th August 2023 at 06.00am to 07.30am UTC (Zoom link)

Western Time: Tuesday 29th August 2023 at 12.00pm to 13.30pm UTC (Zoom link)

Critical Minerals Workshops

Eastern Time: Monday 28th August at 07.30am to 09.00am UTC (Zoom link)

Western Time: Tuesday 29th August 2023 at 15.00pm to 16.30pm UTC (Zoom link)

22) UN advises against offsets for carbon removal technologies.

Billions of dollars are pouring into tech-based solutions to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but the UNFCCC says they are unproven and pose unknown risks. The United Nations climate body has cast doubt over technologies that aim to suck carbon pollution from the atmosphere, calling them “unproven” and potentially risky.

In a briefing note, unnamed authors from the UN’s climate body (UNFCCC) said these removal activities are “technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks”. It concludes they are therefore not suitable for offsetting carbon emissions under the upcoming UN’s global scheme. The UN assessment has angered the growing industry, which is seeing billions of dollars of investment from governments and corporations.

The UN document does not spell out why these carbon removal technologies do not contribute to sustainable development and the industry disputed this. “We would be pleased to connect you with carbon removal leaders advancing projects in Kenya, Kiribati, India, Brazil and other locations around the world where Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is contributing directly to local regional economic development”, their letter said.

The Center for International Environmental Law called carbon removal “a dangerous distraction”. The NGO argued that relying on removal technology, “both delays the immediate reduction of emissions and presents independent risks to human rights and the environment, some of which remain poorly understood”.

Check out the full article for more info.

23) Batteries are the environmental Achilles heel of electric vehicles – unless we repair, reuse and recycle them.

In other words, the answer to the question of “Are electric vehicles really eco-friendly?” largely depends on how we manage the downsides associated with their batteries. Changes in how we design, produce, use and recycle electric car batteries are urgently needed. These changes can ensure that, in solving the problem of fossil fuel emissions, we also minimise other environmental harms.
The long list of benefits of giving electric vehicle batteries a second life, then recycling their materials, is enticing. Given the scale of the potential economic and environmental gains, along with the countless jobs such work can create, batteries could be more generous in their afterlife than in their first incarnation in electric vehicles.

This is an area I am particularly interested in. As EV use grows let's hope there are adequate incentives to ensure the precious resources used in the batteries are reused and then fully recycled. Check out the full article which details ways we can significantly reduce demand and hence the emissions associated with EV battery production, simply by fully utilising the batteries before recycling.

24)  Young Montana residents bring climate change case to court.

This court case was filed in March 2020 in the US and is the first constitutional climate trial in that country. This article gives some background information about the trial.

“We’re asking the government and the courts to do their job and protect us, along with the rest of Montana’s citizens and our incredible home state; this case is one big opportunity for the state to become a leader in preserving a safe, beautiful and prosperous future for Montana,” Grace Gibson-Snyder, a 19-year-old plaintiff, said.

Advocates hope the trial could set precedent for similar cases to move forward and that it could inspire legal action in other states. The state’s constitution has since 1972 guaranteed that the “state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations”. By propping up fossil fuels, the plaintiffs argue, the state has failed to uphold this responsibility.

The case closed on June 20th and Judge Seeley who presided over the case recently issued her 103 page order in favour of the complainants.
This article calls the decision a "Gamechanger". Hopefully it provides some impetus for further similar cases.

Among the policies the challengers targeted was a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) barring the state from considering how its energy economy impacts climate change. This year, state lawmakers amended the provision to specifically ban the state from considering greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews for new energy projects. That provision is unconstitutional, Seeley ruled.
“By prohibiting consideration of climate change, [greenhouse gas] emissions, and how additional GHG emissions will contribute to climate change or be consistent with the Montana constitution, the MEPA limitation violates plaintiffs’ right to a clean and healthful environment,” Seeley wrote.

This YouTube video from Democracy Now also has info about the case and this Guardian article looks at some implications of this case.

25) Fungi Lock Away Over One-Third of Annual Global Fossil Fuel Emissions In the Soil, Study Finds.

This is some very interesting research giving preliminary information about the role of underground fungi in carbon sequestration. More research is needed to confirm how accurate their calculations are but this initial work indicates we need to gain more understanding of the processes involved and do whatever is necessary to avoid harming these fungal networks.  

Fungi stores a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions and could be essential to reaching net zero, new study reveals.

• Mycorrhizal fungi are responsible for holding up to 36 per cent of yearly global fossil fuel emissions below ground - more than China emits each year.
• The fungi make up a vast underground network all over the planet underneath grasslands and forests, as well as roads, gardens, and houses on every continent on Earth
• It is not only crucial to storing carbon and keeping the planet cooler, but are also essential to global biodiversity
• Researchers are now calling for fungi to be considered more heavily in conservation and biodiversity policies, and are investigating whether we can increase how much carbon the soil underneath us can hold.                                                                                  

Professor Katie Field, Professor of Plant-Soil Processes at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the study, said: “Mycorrhizal fungi represent a blind spot in carbon modelling, conservation, and restoration - the numbers we’ve uncovered are jaw-dropping, and when we’re thinking about solutions for climate we should also be thinking about what we can harness that exists already. Soil ecosystems are being destroyed at an alarming rate through agriculture, development and other industry, but the wider impacts of disruption of soil communities are poorly understood. When we disrupt the ancient life support systems in the soil, we sabotage our efforts to limit global heating and undermine the ecosystems on which we depend. More needs to be done to protect these underground networks - we already knew that they were essential for biodiversity, and now we have even more evidence that they are crucial to the health of our planet.”

Check out the full article for more information.

26) The Spanish Government favours promotion of initiatives to make Ecocide an international crime.

Jojo Mehta, Stop Ecocide International’s Co-founder and Executive Director, says: “This is a very encouraging response from the Spanish government and shows it is now unequivocally time for ecocide law to be progressed at national as well as regional and international levels. It responds to the growing global awareness of how downright dangerous it is to destroy the ecosystems upon which we entirely depend - for lives and livelihoods, for sustaining crucial and threatened biodiversity, and for regulating climate on our shared planet. There is no stopping this direction of travel - it is now only a matter of time before legal recognition of ecocide becomes the norm around the world.”

For more info go to the Stop Ecocide website.

27) Degrowth: Is There Any Alternative?

This article from the Truthdig website offers a thought provoking critique of an essay published in May in the New York Times. I appreciate critical analysis of big claims made in the main stream media that paint a rosy picture of our predicament when in fact the reality is much more complicated. The expectation that we can get ourselves out of the mess we have created on our planet without making major changes to our lifestyles and economic systems is a pipe dream in my opinion, so I have a lot of sympathy for the view expressed in the Truthdig article and recommend reading it in full. Here is an extract -

To slow climate change and rescue key ecosystems from the brink, a new economic paradigm is needed.

In a May 30 essay for the New York Times titled “The New Climate Law Is Working. Clean Energy Investments Are Soaring,” one of the architects of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Brian Deese, wrote, “Nine months since that law was passed in Congress, the private sector has mobilized well beyond our initial expectations to generate clean energy, build battery factories and develop other technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

There’s just one problem. Those technologies aren’t going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The only way to reduce emissions fast enough to prevent climate catastrophe is to phase out the burning of oil, gas, and coal by law, directly and deliberately. If, against all odds, the United States does that, we certainly will need wind- and solar-power installations, batteries, and new technologies to compensate for the decline of energy from fossil fuels. There is no reason, however, to expect that the process would work in reverse; a “clean-energy” mobilization alone won’t cause a steep reduction in use of fossil fuels.

I think top leaders in Washington are using green-energy pipe dreams to distract us from the reality that they have given up altogether on reducing US fossil fuel use. Societies must decide: do we want a growing GDP or a livable future? We can’t have both.

28) Nate Hagens - Reality Roundtable series.

These are roughly 90 minute long forums with Nate and usually 3 other participants.  The three topics so far have been "Electric Vehicles," "Deep(er) Ecology" and "Unlearning Economics."  Highly recommended if you are wanting to think about the bigger issues around how we got into this crisis and about the challenges that are emerging, as we attempt to deal with it. We found the Deep(er) Ecology session very interesting. The Unlearning Economics session is pretty technical in places but still worth the effort if you're interested in understanding the deep seated obstacles to change embedded in our current economic system.

If interested you can check out the full series on YouTube.

29) Why science needs art according to Professor Tim Jackson.

Sustainable economics expert Professor Tim Jackson is from the University of Surrey in England.

In this RNZ interview he says we need less growth to put less demand on the planet's resources and slow down climate change, but we need more art, more plays and works of fiction to bring both sides of that argument to life. More is not always better. He's the Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Surrey and the man to bring these two worlds together as a scientist, playwright and philosopher.

30) Earth cries! We are the gods that must step up to the biggest crisis in history.

Ben Okri is a Booker prize-winning author and poet. His book Tiger Work, a collection of stories, essays and poems about the climate crisis, is published by Head of Zeus. His poem "Earth Cries" was published recently in the Guardian. In it Ben calls for bold action in this era of wildfires, overheated oceans and shrinking biodiversity. My suggestion is that you take the time to read it our aloud to anyone who is willing to listen or just to yourself.

31) Why ideas of ‘planetary boundaries’ must uphold environmental justice.

How many biophysical boundaries does our planet have? What are the limits of, say, carbon dioxide emissions, ocean acidification, chemicals and air pollution beyond which existence becomes unsafe for Earth and its inhabitants?

Back in 2009, a team of researchers led by environmental scientist Johan Rockström grappled with these questions in an article published in Nature . In the researchers’ view, planet-altering human activities could be assembled into nine groups. Thresholds were calculated for most of them, beyond which the result could spell danger for the planet and its people. The scientists concluded that humanity has crossed three of these nine ‘planetary boundaries’, and that the remaining six would also be crossed unless remedial action was taken.

A gap in the original concept was that it lacked environmental justice and equity — it needed to take into account the fact that everyone, especially the most vulnerable, has an absolute right to water, food, energy and health, alongside the right to a clean environment.

Rockström, together with sustainability scientist Steven Lade and a team of researchers, have modified their original concept to incorporate justice alongside the biophysical boundaries. The resulting findings, which build on a study published in March in Nature Sustainability, show that seven out of eight thresholds have been crossed: the eight are climate, natural ecosystem area, ecosystem functional integrity, surface water, groundwater, nitrogen, phosphorus and aerosols.

Check out the full article in "Nature".

32) Global temperature rises in steps – here's why we can expect a steep climb this year and next.

This article from the Conversation, written by Kevin Trenberth, climate scientist at Auckland University, is the one item in this newsletter highlighting how truly unprecedented (overused word now isn't it) several climate parameters are this year. The global sea surface temperature (measured between 60 degrees north and 60 degrees south), the global 2M air temperature and the Antarctic sea ice extent graphs are all showing large anomalies, so much so that scientists are struggling to understand why. In the article there are two of those graphs for early July but if you wish to monitor them for yourselves and see their ongoing trajectory you can do so on the Climate Analyzer website. Click on the "Climate Data" tab at the top to access the different graphs.

The explanation Kevin provides for the step nature of global temperature rises is worth reading. Here's an extract from the article - 

Now, in 2023, all kinds of records are being broken. The highest daily temperatures ever recorded globally occurred in early July, alongside the largest sea surface temperature anomaly ever. June had its highest global mean surface temperature, according to preliminary analysis. The extent of Antarctica’s sea ice has been at a record low. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations continue to increase at rates that show no sign of slowing.

Evident consequences include torrential downpours in some parts of the world which contrast with excessive heatwaves and wildfires in other locations, notably recently in Canada. But global mean surface temperature does not continue relentlessly upwards. The biggest increases, and warmest years, tend to happen in the latter stages of an El Niño event.

Human-induced climate change is relentless and largely predictable. But at any time, and especially locally, it can be masked by weather events and natural variability on interannual (El Niño) or decadal time scales.

The combination of decadal variability and the warming trend from rising greenhouse gas emissions makes the temperature record look more like a rising staircase, rather than a steady climb.

33) Uh-Oh. Now What? Are We Acquiring the Data to Understand the Situation?

The recent blog posting from James Hansen is worth a look if you're interested in the latest science regarding the unprecedented global heating happening this year and referred to in the previous item. I appreciate James' postings. They are technical but he is always blunt and direct in his assessment of the latest data. At the end of the blog post he says -

"A new climate frontier. The leap of global temperature in the past two months is no ordinary fluctuation. It is fueled by the present extraordinarily large Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). EEI is the proximate cause of global warming. The large imbalance suggests that each month for the rest of the year may be a new record for that month. We are entering a new climate frontier.

When the first author gave a TED talk 10 years ago, EEI was about 0.6 W/m2, averaged over six years (that may not sound like much, but it equals the energy in 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day, every day). Now EEI has approximately doubled. Most of that energy is going into the ocean. If Southern Hemisphere sea ice cover remains low, much of that excess energy will be poured into the Southern Ocean, which is one of the last places we would want it to go.

That does not mean that the problem is unsolvable. It is possible to restore Earth’s energy balance. Perhaps, if the public finds the taste of the new climate frontier to be sufficiently disagreeable, we can begin to consider the actions needed to restore a propitious climate."

You can download a pdf of the full post from his website.

34) Beware ‘blue carbon’ bold, but uncertain claims.

This article from Newsroom advocates asking the hard questions and undertaking sound scrutiny when it comes to some of the claims made to entice investors.

Forests of seaweed grow much faster than forests of trees and so absorb carbon dioxide far more rapidly. That is leading to some bold claims for the potential for seaweed to solve climate change. And it’s being matched with bold actions – Microsoft, Shopify and Stripe are already buying seaweed-based carbon removals.

Is this boldness justified? The biggest challenges do not always bring out the best in people, companies, or nations. There is an inevitable temptation to make bold claims based on little evidence, especially when disproving those claims is hard. This temptation keeps being realised for claims about emissions and emissions reductions.

The best solution, as always, is solid science that reveals the truth of those claims. That science takes time. That creates a gap between claims and truth that allows for hogwash to proliferate.

New Zealand’s current climate strategy is broken – we’ve under-invested in clean technologies, we’re planting permanent forest as fast as we can, and we plan for two-thirds of our emissions reductions to come from overseas forestry credits but we don’t know where or when, or how much they will cost, or whether those credits will be real. Given those uncertainties and the fact of New Zealand’s long coastline and huge Exclusive Economic Zone, blue carbon projects look like a life raft we can grasp onto.

Certainly they have the potential to play a much larger role in our emissions reductions than for other nations. However, we don’t yet know if those projects will turn out to be a life-saver or a straw.
The science is always improving, with remote observation offering promising insights. The message here is caution. Investments and policy should not outpace science. We need to avoid falling into the trap of making and believing audacious claims without solid evidence, especially when those claims purport to serve our national interest. It’s too easy to find credulous customers and investors for emissions reduction projects that lack credibility, additionality, or permanence.

For blue carbon, investors should be asking the hard questions and scrutinising the science before opening their wallets.

35) Contributions from CKM members.

Here are links to some articles sent in by CKM members with topics that may be of interest.

The first is an article titled "I’m a climate scientist. Here’s how I’m handling climate grief".

"For me, healing comes in the form of spending my time outside work enjoying the world around me, rewilding hard-to-access land, writing letters to congresspeople and protecting migrating birds. I’ve spoken to many others who have planted gardens for native pollinators, eaten from local farms and advocated for change with local policymakers. Although small actions might not solve the climate crisis, they remind us that we are intrinsic parts of the world and its ecosystems."

The second is an article titled "Collapse is not a dirty word" by NZer Catherine Knight and published in Newsroom.

"To assume our continued destruction of the planet’s life-supporting systems could lead to any other outcome than collapse is irrational. But, as writes Catherine Knight, the prospect of a 'great unravelling' does present an opportunity." and "Above all, the prospect of collapse is an opportunity. Just like a life-threatening illness, it should stop us in our tracks, to fundamentally re-evaluate what really matters in our lives. For most of us, it will be sustenance, warmth, connection with those we love, and the ability to find joy and laughter in everyday things. We can have all this with much simpler lives which don’t cost the earth."

The third is an article titled "Despair is a luxury we can’t afford": This is from Canadian David Suzuki, on fighting for action on the climate crisis.

"Amid the gloom, Suzuki sees cause to keep fighting. He traces humanity’s plight back to the Renaissance, when he says we lost the idea that we are embedded as a strand of nature dependent on everything around us – plants, animals, air, water, soil and sunlight – and instead placed ourselves at the top of a pyramid with everything else beneath us. He says this idea has only strengthened since the Industrial Revolution, but can be reversed."

  
LOCAL

1) Media article written by CKM member Tom Powell since the last newsletter.

12/03/2023 - Opinion article: Electric rail should be the future of domestic transport

2) Earth Day Essays.

CKM ran an Earth Day Essay challenge in 2020. Finally many of the entries have been published in a small booklet called "Earth Day Essays - A Child's Perspective". The theme for students was "It is important to have Earth Day because...." and many of the resulting entries were thought provoking, thoughtful and delightful. The winner of the competition was Sophie Kole who is now a Year 11 student at Marlborough Girls College (MGC). She has written a small piece for a recent MGC newsletter about her entry which you can read if interested. If anyone wants to purchase a copy for $15 please contact us and we can organise to get it to you.

We are running another Essay challenge for students this year which will be publicised in June. The challenge this time is to write a letter to the Prime Minister of NZ saying - "What I'd like you to do for Papatuanuku is...."

3) MDC Environment and Planning Committee meeting – March 9th.

You can download the full agenda if interested - March 9th agenda.

A) ESMG report.

There was a comprehensive report from the Environmental Science and Monitoring Group (ESMG) about their functions, key areas of responsibility and challenges.

“The core activities of the ESMG focus on state of the environment monitoring, reporting, investigations and collection of environmental data. In addition, the ESMG delivers several environmental programmes that provide for both economic, and social wellbeing of the community and help protect and restore our natural environment. The collection of high-quality environmental data managed over the long term is a prerequisite to sound decision making for policy development, hazard management and achieving a range of community outcomes including resource consent requirements.”

An important focus for them is consolidating the resilience of their data network and this is currently being reviewed. They recently lost access to some of their monitoring network for about 6 days due to a lightning strike on the repeater on Mt Riley.

B) Wairau Plain Land-Use Intensification Modelling.

Peter Davidson gave a presentation on the Wairau Plain Land-Use Intensification Modelling work they have been doing. The aim was to design a Wairau Plain nitrate-nitrogen predictor tool and provide forecasts of nitrate-nitrogen concentrations leached to groundwater for potential future crop types.

Executive Summary

• “Currently, rural areas of the Wairau Plain are predominantly used for growing grapes and nitrate-nitrogen levels in groundwater are low, especially north of Rapaura Road due to the diluting effects of transmissive aquifer flows.
• Groundwater underlying land southwards to New Renwick Road contain increasing levels of nitrate-nitrogen which in certain seasons and sites can exceed the surface water limit in the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan (PMEP) of 1.5 parts per million.
• The model predicted that if current Wairau Plain vineyards were replaced with market gardening, pip-fruit or dairying, groundwater nitrate-nitrogen concentrations would exceed the annual maximum limit in the PMEP.”

There are currently 14,000 Ha of vineyards growing over the Wairau Aquifer. They have determined the leaching rates in this area from the lysimeter data which feeds into their model. This shows that nitrate-nitrogen levels are around 1.2ppm which is very good compared to many other agricultural areas in NZ. It does tend to increase as you move from the river up towards New Renwick Rd. The model shows that nitrate-nitrogen levels north of Rapaura Rd would be about 3ppm for dairying. This would increase to about 7ppm at New Renwick Rd due to reduced flushing of the aquifer.

C) Submission on Natural and Built Environment Bill and Spatial Planning Bill.

For anyone interested here is a copy of the full submission.

In the introduction they provide the following summary.

MDC’s submission focusses on key areas of importance to Marlborough.

• MDC strongly supports Marlborough remaining one of the 15 regions required to develop a Regional Spatial Strategy (RSS) and a Natural and Built Environment Plan (NBE Plan) under the SP Bill and NBE Bill respectively, separate from Nelson and Tasman.
• Marlborough is best suited to become one of the first three regions to be part of the Ministry for the Environment’s (Mfe) model project and commence working on its RSS and NBE Plan.
• To improve efficiency, and reduce complexity, there should be an option to combine the RSS and NBE Plan into one planning document.
• There needs to be clear direction in the National Planning Framework (NPF) as to how the principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi are to be interpreted and implemented by persons exercising the powers and functions under the NBE Bill and SP Bill.
• Local government participation is required on the Freshwater Working Group to understand the local or regional context for freshwater allocation. Clearer direction is also required in respect of allocation statements, as well as their timing and sequencing with the current freshwater planning process to ensure efficient and effective integration into RSS and NBE Plans.
• MDC is concerned with ensuring the requirements under the NBE Bill and SP Bill are operationally workable. Areas of concern are highlighted with respect to freshwater farm plans, contaminated land, biodiversity and coastal management.
• The CAA needs to progress without delay and with input from local government. The CAA needs to be aligned and integrated with the NBE Bill, SP Bill and the NPF to effectively respond to climate change and meet the objectives of the reform.

It is also interesting to note - “MDC supports the concept of combining plans at a regional level. It promotes efficiencies and enhances useability for the public. The Randerson Report identified a lack of vertical integration between the hierarchy of regional and district planning documents as one of the key drivers for recommending combined plans.
The Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan’s (PMEP) structure is the very model the Randerson Report recommended. It is a combined regional policy statement, a regional coastal plan, a regional plan, and district plan, with the one planning document containing all regional and district provisions in an integrated way. This structure, authorised by s 80 of the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA), is unique in the country.”

D) Regional Sea Level Rise Modelling.

The National Institute of Water and Atmosphere (NIWA) has been engaged to undertake ‘first pass’ Sea Level Rise (SLR) inundation modelling for the region. The SLR modelling will use the latest national sea level rise projections, vertical land movement data, and recently updated national SLR guidance material (MfE, August 2022).
The project is a specific action within the MDC Climate Change Action Plan 2020 (action 2.(b)).
This ‘first pass’ will help to identify which stakeholders should be involved in the next level of investigation, and provide the basis for community engagement, while helping Council decision makers to get resources, support, and future commitment.
It’s important to highlight to the committee that this ‘project’ integrates with Climate Change policies, objectives, and methods that have already been actively developed with the community as part of the proposed Marlborough Environment Plan (PMEP)

All appeals on the ‘Climate Change’ Topic, Issues, Objectives, Policy, and Methods have now been resolved. This is an important factor as having the MEP framework beyond challenge means that we have a strong connection to several strategic elements of the MfE DAPP process and the 10-step decision making cycle. While this is giving effect to the MEP implementation it also sets up the need for a future ‘Coastal Hazard’ longer-term strategic response.

Once MDC has the information on SLR and coastal hazard assessments we can begin a process of linking work streams together, creating community awareness of the MfE DAPP process and next steps for Council, creating greater clarity around the SLR work, and efforts underway in the climate change topic.

The calls for action for this focus area include.

• Develop a coastal hazard plan including consideration of the extent of the risks, options and regulatory responses for adaptation, relocation, coastal structures etc.
• Regulatory activities (resource and building consents, designations) continue to account for sea level rise based on the MEP provisions and the latest MfE guidance.
• Undertake and support national initiatives to undertake mapping of the coastal margins.
• Use the Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning (DAPP) and other appropriate tools in decision making where appropriate (pMEP connection)

Finally this Stuff article by Maia Hart on the SLR report provides a good analysis -

4) Slow Water: how to combat floods and droughts.

This 25 minute interview on Radio NZ in March deals with a matter that has risen a lot in people's consciousness over the last few months with the multiple extreme rainfall and flood events we have experienced in Aotearoa.
 
"Treating water management as an engineering problem ignores the complex systems in which it operates, a US author says. Just as floods and droughts are the first obvious sign of climate change, we are making things much worse by the way we manage or mismanage water, award-winning independent journalist and author Erica Gies says. In her book Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge, she travels the world, examining ‘slow water’ systems where wetlands, floodplains, high altitude grasslands and forests soften flood peaks, store water for droughts, and keep natural systems healthy."

Tom Kay from Forest and Bird also gave an excellent presentation recently on the topic of giving "Room for Rivers" at Blenheim school. I have highlighted this info before but for anyone interested here is the link again to the F&B "Room for Rivers" campaign.

5) Why I strike: A student's plea for action.

This hard hitting opinion piece written by Petra Graney from Nelson Girls College and published in Stuff is well worth a read.

"Earth is not at any risk from damage caused by humans. It’s been around for 4.5 billion years, witnessing thousands of versions of creation, existence, and life. It will be around for billions more, no matter what we do - or do not do. Planet Earth will be fine.
What I’m worried about is everything on it, that we know and rely on and love. Oceans, forests, biodiversity, culture, cities and people. All these things are so heavily integrated into everything we do that we can't even imagine existence without it, like a subconscious denial. And if we can’t have the foresight to see the version of Earth that we are hurtling towards, how can we take action to stop it? "

6) Climate Adaptation calendar from Nelson Tasman Climate Forum.

The Nelson Tasman Climate Forum people have produced a Climate Adaptation calendar to help build community resilience. You can download a copy on their website.

NATIONAL

7) Rod Carr talk at EDS annual conference.  

This video recording is of a talk given by Rod Carr, the Chair of the Climate Commission at the recent annual conference of the Environmental Defense Society (EDS). To be honest I'm a little in awe of Rod's ability to share critical information in such a coherent and succinct way and highly recommend listening to this talk titled "Jointly addressing Aotearoa's Climate and Biodiversity Crises." 

Here is an example from his talk when Rod was highlighting the delusional reality of planning to meet our Paris commitments by buying carbon credits offshore.

"....It is not surprising that we believe in global markets and the efficiencies that can be derived through specialisation. We also therefore extrapolate that if somewhere in the world there is somebody we assume can abate their emissions at lower cost than us, why would we suffer the cost for local abatement rather than pay others to do it more cheaply? The theory appears sound. The practice however is highly problematic. For offshoring to work, that is paying another country to do more than it would have done, so that it is truly additional, truly permanent, truly measurable, and here's the kicker,  truly enforceable reductions, is a mechanism yet to be determined. And yet by the end of this decade we're assuming we will be able to acquire 100 million tonnes equivalent of carbon dioxide emissions from someone yet to be identified, at a price yet to be determined, that is truely enforceable. Good luck!" 

8) Health checks on the carbon in New Zealand's native forests were halved despite warnings over the risks.

"Roughly every five years, conservation workers go deep into the forests of Aotearoa to count animal droppings, birds and carbon. This data is a health check for our native forests. But government funding for the task has quietly been halved, meaning the checks are happening less thoroughly. Stuff's Climate Change Editor Eloise Gibson set out to find out why."

You can listen to a 12 minute podcast from Radio NZ and/or read this Stuff article for more info.

9) We planted pine in response to Cyclone Bola – with devastating consequences. It is now time to invest in natives.

This article written by David Norton, Emeritus Professor at Canterbury University. In it he writes -

With more than 40 years experience researching forest ecology and sustainable land management in Aotearoa, I believe there are four key areas where we need to urgently act to address these issues.

i) As a country we need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and rapidly increase the draw-down of CO2 out of the atmosphere. These are national issues and not confined to Tairāwhiti but as a nation we seem to be sleepwalking in our response to the climate emergency.

ii) We need a comprehensive catchment-by-catchment assessment across all of Tairāwhiti (and likely other areas of Aotearoa) to identify those plantations that are located in the wrong place in terms of potential harvesting impacts. There should be no further harvesting in Tairāwhiti plantations until this exercise has been completed. We also need to identify those areas that currently lack plantations but should never be planted in exotic tree crops (for any purpose).

iii) The government then needs to buy out the current owners of these plantations and embark on a programme of careful conversion to native forest. This will come at a cost, but it needs to be done. We already have models for this in Tairāwhiti where the Gisborne District Council has started converting pine forests in its water supply catchment to native forests.

iv) Finally, we need to establish substantially more native forests throughout all Tairāwhiti, and Aotearoa more generally, to help build resilience in our landscapes.

Here are some further items of interest on this topic now that the hard hitting Ministerial Inquiry looking into slash damage in Tairāwhiti/East Coast has been released.
The press release from the Beehive with a link to the "Outrage to Optimism" Report.
From Aaron Smale of Newsroom - Scathing slash report takes aim at multiple parties.
From RNZ - Forestry report urges immediate halt on wide-scale felling.
Iwi call on government to commit to forestry report recommendations.
The Detail also has a 24 minute podcast available titled "Forestry's uncertain future on the East Coast" for anyone interested in a more in-depth analysis.

10) The new climate denial: adaptation over mitigation.

Cindy Baxter from Coal Action Network wrote an article on this topic available on the CAN website. She lives in Piha so witnessed plenty of devastation during the Auckland floods.  She says "What’s also lurking behind my tears is the fact that I’ve been working to stop climate change for 30 years and the same old arguments keep coming up: that it’s too expensive to act on. For years we’ve been pushing the government to do the work to understand the costs of climate impacts, to weigh them up against the costs of action, of cutting emissions and moving to a low-carbon economy.  Because if the only numbers you have are the costs of action, it bolsters all those who object to taking the strong action we need.  The Climate Change Commission didn’t have the numbers either. The work on the cost of climate impacts just hasn’t been done.  Perhaps we should start with the bill from Gabrielle.
And now we’re hearing a new kind of climate denial – most ridiculous claims from people like Chris Trotter, and Matthew Hooton, arguing that it’s now too late to act on climate change, now we just have to get on with adapting to it. Act’s Brooke Van Velden joined the fray on TVNZ Breakfast. Hooton has spent decades trying to (incorrectly) spin New Zealand’s lack of real climate action in favour of planting pine trees as somehow being world-leading. It isn’t and has never been the case. The question they haven’t looked at is how much you can adapt to: and when it simply becomes what the UNFCCC views as “loss and damage.”

11) ‘Slipping through our fingers’: New Zealand scientists distraught at scale of glacier loss.

There is a grief in watching the ice melt. Some of these scientists have been monitoring these glaciers for decades, returning every year to take their pictures. They know each by name, and have their personal favourites. Some of the glaciers they used to record have vanished over the last decade. Mackintosh and Lorrey occasionally lean over their grey vinyl seats to exchange observations, gazing out the shuddering windows. “She looks like shit,” one of them says.

“It’s interesting as a scientist, and a bit challenging as a human being to see that change,” Mackintosh says. “There’s a kind of conflict: of fascination in how the system can change so rapidly, combined with the emotional response of seeing the loss of ice that’s such an important part of the landscape, and so beautiful and so culturally important.”

Checkout the full article.

12) Are New Zealand's marine heatwaves a warning to the world?

"As seas around Aotearoa heat at an unparalleled rate, scientists are starting to understand what it might mean for marine ecosystems.
New figures provided to the Guardian by scientists studying ocean temperature shifts show that on average, over the year to April 2023, New Zealand’s coastal waters sat stewing in marine heatwave conditions for 208 days. Some southern regions experienced marine heatwave conditions for more than 270 days during the period. In the north island’s Bay of Plenty, the waters remained in heatwave for an entire year.

With little respite for species to recover between the waves of heat, scientists warn that some ecosystems are reaching tipping points under the surface, with effects that will be felt years into the future. No one yet knows what it will mean for the fish, seabirds, whales, dolphins, and New Zealand’s multi-billion dollar fishing industry. As scientists and communities begin to reckon with the impact, the conditions hitting Aotearoa provide a preview of the future of the world’s oceans under climate change: waters around the world are projected to rise by about 4C on average by 2100, if the world maintains its course on global heating. Heatwaves around New Zealand are already seeing spikes that high, giving a glimpse of what it can do to species under the surface.

In Marlborough’s fish farms last year, the fish had died in their thousands, unable to survive the rising temperatures around them. In warmer areas, about 42% of total fish stock died. The country’s largest salmon producer, NZ King Salmon, announced it would have to shut down some of its farms as the climate heated waters around the sounds. “When I joined this company, I never heard of the term ‘marine heatwave’,” said CEO Grant Rosewarne, as the company reckoned with the losses. “Recently, there’s been three of them. “We thought we had more time,” he said. “Climate change is a slow process. But faster than many people think.”

Check out the full article which includes some excellent graphics showing the increase in marine heatwave conditions over the last few decades.

13) Dealing to Climate Change - Professor Jonathon Boston and Climate Minister James Shaw.

The Fabians hosted a public meeting recently where Jonathon Boston and James Shaw had a session about managed retreat. There was some very interesting discussion and questions from a large audience. Worth a listen if you want to understand more about some of the current thinking regarding the dynamics, obstacles and options for managed retreat in NZ. 

14) A Case for a United Parliament to manage NZ's response to Global Warming and Climate Change.

This paper  written by Robert Simpson, an old friend of Lesley and mine from our time living on the West Coast in the 1970's and '80's, is an excellent, well thought out proposal stating what so many of us know is essential if we are to collectively and constructively manage the challenges arising from the climate and biodiversity emergency. In the paper Robert says - "This paper proposes a new, effective, encompassing concept for addressing the Global Warming catastrophe. It will not be actioned today. But it opens and brings to consciousness an idea that may gather momentum and influence because it makes sense. Hopefully before it is too late."

Robert also shared a poem he wrote to express his deep seated sorrow for the predicament we find ourselves in.

EARTH’S RESPONSE

Sorrow.
There’s nothing I can do.
I raised you on my bosom
but what you’ve set in motion
I cannot heal.
It’s only you.

My golden tribe
in whom I had such hope
wrenched the divine
from the earth
without imagining
what would come to pass.

INTERNATIONAL

15) New study helps solve a 30-year-old puzzle: how is climate change affecting El Niño and La Niña?

The Conversation recently printed an article highlighting this new study. It's very topical after the flooding events in Australia and NZ over the last three La Nina years.

"Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions mean strong El Niño and La Niña events are occurring more often, according to our new research, which provides important new evidence of the human fingerprint on Earth’s climate. For more than 30 years, climate researchers have puzzled over the link between human-caused climate change and El Niño and La Niña events. We set out to bridge this knowledge gap. Climate scientists have long observed a correlation between climate change impacts on our oceans and atmosphere, and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Our research examined when this activity may have started to make El Niño and La Niña events more extreme. Our deep analysis found a relationship between human-caused greenhouse gas activity and changes to El Niño and La Niña. Our findings were five years in the making. They help us understand how El Niño and La Niña will change as the world warms in the future."

16) ‘Everyone should be concerned’: Antarctic sea ice reaches lowest levels ever recorded.

This Guardian article published on March 4th said - "For 44 years, satellites have helped scientists track how much ice is floating on the ocean around Antarctica’s 18,000km coastline. The continent’s fringing waters witness a massive shift each year, with sea ice peaking at about 18m sq km each September before dropping to just above 2m sq km by February. But across those four decades of satellite observations, there has never been less ice around the continent than there was last week.
“By the end of January we could tell it was only a matter of time. It wasn’t even a close run thing,” says Dr Will Hobbs, an Antarctic sea ice expert at the University of Tasmania with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.
“We are seeing less ice everywhere. It’s a circumpolar event.” In the southern hemisphere summer of 2022, the amount of sea ice dropped to 1.92m sq km on 25 February – an all-time low based on satellite observations that started in 1979. But by 12 February this year, the 2022 record had already been broken. The ice kept melting, reaching a new record low of 1.79m sq km on 25 February and beating the previous record by 136,000 sq km – an area double the size of Tasmania."

17) ‘Headed off the charts’: world’s ocean surface temperature hits record high.

The temperature data referred to in these articles is the world average sea surface temperature between the latitudes of 60 degrees N and 60 degrees S, measured by satellite and ocean buoys.

"The temperature of the world’s ocean surface has hit an all-time high since satellite records began, leading to marine heatwaves around the globe, according to US government data. Climate scientists said preliminary data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) showed the average temperature at the ocean’s surface has been at 21.1C since the start of April – beating the previous high of 21C set in 2016. “The current trajectory looks like it’s headed off the charts, smashing previous records,” said Prof Matthew England, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.
A study last year said the amount of heat accumulating in the ocean was accelerating and penetrating deeper, providing fuel for extreme weather. England, a co-author of that study, said: “What we are seeing now [with the record sea surface temperatures] is the emergence of a warming signal that more clearly reveals the footprint of our increased interference with the climate system.”

Check out the full article.

This second article published about 3 weeks later said -

"Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis. The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain. Data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), known as the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series, gathered by satellites and buoys, has shown temperatures higher than in any previous year, in a series stretching back to 1981, continuously over the past 42 days."

Check out the full article.

For anyone interested you can see the ongoing trend updated every 2 days on the Climate Reanalyzer website. As of May 29th it was slowly descending but still well above any previous records.

18) Antarctic alarm bells: observations reveal deep ocean currents are slowing earlier than predicted.

"Antarctica sets the stage for the world’s greatest waterfall. The action takes place beneath the surface of the ocean. Here, trillions of tonnes of cold, dense, oxygen-rich water cascade off the continental shelf and sink to great depths. This Antarctic “bottom water” then spreads north along the sea floor in deep ocean currents, before slowly rising, thousands of kilometres away. In this way, Antarctica drives a global network of ocean currents called the “overturning circulation” that redistributes heat, carbon and nutrients around the globe. The overturning is crucial to keeping Earth’s climate stable. It’s also the main way oxygen reaches the deep ocean.

But there are signs this circulation is slowing down and it’s happening decades earlier than predicted. This slowdown has the potential to disrupt the connection between the Antarctic coasts and the deep ocean, with profound consequences for Earth’s climate, sea level and marine life. Our new research, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, uses real-world observations to decipher how and why the deep ocean around Antarctica has changed over the past three decades. Our measurements show the overturning circulation has slowed by almost a third (30%) and deep ocean oxygen levels are declining. This is happening even earlier than climate models predicted."

Check out the full article.

19) The Current Mass Extinction Is Already Far More Dire Than We Realized.

"Ambitious targets intended to slam the brakes on our current mass extinction may already be slipping out of reach barely a year after they were established, new research suggests. Data on birds and mammals reveal there's a huge time lag between environmental change and its impact on animal populations, of up to 45 years depending on the species and the drivers of change. This means the historic 'peace pact with nature' pledged at the United Nation's Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in December last year may already be out of date, as the extent of this lag was not taken into account in projections of future losses.

"There is wide recognition that time is short for the integrated, ambitious actions needed to stop biodiversity loss by 2050," write Natural History Museum zoologist Richard Cornford and colleagues. "This work shows that time is even shorter than had been thought."
The good news is that active management of protected areas does mitigate the threats from direct use of wildlife like hunting, which is important for the livelihoods of many people. This can continue if sustainable limits are maintained like hunting quotas.

What's more, taking the effort to manage and restore habitats has direct benefits for human health too, as healthy, functioning ecosystems are less likely to spill diseases into human populations. Conserving biodiversity is a massive win-win for ourselves, the wider ecosystems we live within, and for climate change mitigation. Our actions had better be fast and meaningful if we're serious about saving what remains."

Check out the full article.

20) The coming EV batteries will sweep away fossil fuel transport, with or without net zero.

This looks like the real deal!  Maybe finally we have a breakthrough in new battery technology that is sustainable and can help drive down transport emissions? The good news is that it is a solid state battery that needs no cobalt and can potentially be made with sodium instead of lithium.  Sodium is a plentiful resource. This should be good news for renewable energy and bad news for hydrogen proponents.  

"The Argonne National Laboratory in the US has essentially cracked the battery technology for electric vehicles, discovering a way to raise the future driving range of standard EVs to a thousand miles or more. It promises to do so cheaply without exhausting the global supply of critical minerals in the process.
The joint project with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has achieved a radical jump in the energy density of battery cells. The typical lithium-ion battery used in the car industry today stores about 200 watt-hours per kilo (Wh/kg). Their lab experiment has already reached 675 Wh/kg with a lithium-air variant. Prof Curtiss said the current prototype is based on lithium but does not have to be. The same type of battery could be developed with sodium. It will take more time, but can be done,” he said. Switching to sodium would halve the driving range but it would still be double today’s generation of batteries. Sodium is ubiquitous. There are deposits in Dorset, Cheshire, or Ulster. The US and Canada have vast salt lakes. Sodium can be produced cheaply from seawater in hot regions via evaporation. There is no supply constraint. This knocks out another myth: that the EV revolution is impossible on a planetary scale because there either is not enough lithium, or not enough at viable cost under free market conditions in states aligned with the Western democracies. (The copper shortage is more serious, but there may be solutions for that as well using graphene with aluminium)."The study is peer-reviewed and has just appeared in the research journal Science. Their solid-state battery has achieved the highest energy density yet seen anywhere in the world.

Check out the full article for more info.

21) Revisiting The Limits to Growth.

There was a reference in the preamble of the August newsletter last year to the report prepared by KPMG Director Advisory Gaya Herrington in which she analysed the original Club of Rome "Limits to Growth" report from 1972. Here's a quote from Gaya - "Given the unappealing prospect of collapse, I was curious to see which scenarios were aligning most closely with empirical data today. After all, the book that featured this world model was a bestseller in the 70s, and by now we’d have several decades of empirical data which would make a comparison meaningful. But to my surprise I could not find recent attempts for this. So I decided to do it myself."

The full report can be downloaded on the KPMG website for anyone interested.

I recently came across a blog by Andrew Curry on the resilience.org website. Andrew works for the the School of International Futures in London and has done a useful brief critique of Gaya's paper.

He says - "In her paper, Gaya Herrington has taken four of those scenarios to find out how they are playing out against actual data, and what that means for likely outcomes over the next couple of decades. The four scenarios she chose are, Business As Usual (BAU); Business as Usual 2 (BAU2), which is a revised later version of BAU; Comprehensive Technology (CT); and Stabilized World (SW).
Both BAU and BAU2 are catastrophic; global industrial decline in the near future followed by population decline. And when you look at the slowing growth rates and declining productivity rates that keep perplexing economists, it’s maybe a sign that we are already on the runway for this outcome. Comprehensive Technology has an industrial decline, while population stabilises. In Stabilized World, industrial output and population both stabilise. In comparing outcomes with the Limits projections, Herrington finds that BAU2, and CT track the actual outcomes closely: BAU quite a lot; SW not so much."

Andrew concludes by stating - "There’s one more point here that’s relevant. Economists such as Branko Milanovic argue that flattening out growth—whether that’s “post-growth” or “de-growth”—is not going to be possible because people won’t accept it. But that’s not the choice. The choice is that either we end up with unmanaged decline, which would be catastrophic, or a managed levelling out of our economies, shaped by a shift in social values and expectations. We need some politicians who are willing to be honest about this."

On a positive note (because I worry about too much doom and gloom) you may also be interested to know that the Club of Rome published a book last year titled "Earth for All – A Survival Guide for Humanity". On their website they say "Earth For All is both an antidote to despair and a road map to a better future."
The Canberra Times also printed a review of the book if you want to check it out.

22) Post-growth Europe: 400+ experts call for wellbeing economy.

"There is no empirical basis indicating that it is possible to globally and sufficiently decouple economic growth from environmental pressures. The pursuit of endless economic growth by high income nations is a problem as it either reduces or cancels the outcomes of environmental policies. The current climate chaos and unraveling web of life on which our society depends is an existential threat to peace, water and food security, and democracy.

Advancing to a post-growth economy is not only to survive, but also to thrive. This calls for a democratically planned and equitable downscaling of production and consumption, sometimes referred to as ‘degrowth’, in those countries that overshoot their ecological resources."

For those who are interested you can read the full Open Letter.

23) Time to pay the piper: Fossil fuel companies’ reparations for climate damages.

I personally see some variation of this type of redistribution of wealth as being essential if we are to find a way to a world with a lot less conflict and a lot more co-operation and compassion.

"The calls for climate reparations are rapidly growing in the scientific literature, among climate movements, and in the policy debate. This article proposes morally based reparations for oil, gas, and coal producers, presents a methodological approach for their implementation, and quantifies reparations for the top twenty-one fossil fuel companies.

Human-caused climate change has long been acknowledged as essentially an ethical issue that threatens humanity and ravages the planet. While the Global North’s historical carbon emissions have exceeded their fair share of the planetary boundary by an estimated 92%, the impacts of climate breakdown fall disproportionally on the Global South, which is responsible for a trivial share — Africa, Asia, and Latin America contribute only 8%—of excess emissions.
At the same time, the world’s richest 1% of the population contributed 15% of emissions between 1990 and 2015, more than twice as much as the poorest 50%, who contributed just 7% but who suffer the brunt of climate harm.
This inequity is exacerbated by poorer societies’ lack of resources to adapt to climate impacts and by the persistent reluctance of the Global North to provide them with the necessary funding and assistance as required by the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) of article 3 of the UNFCCC.

Considering fossil fuel companies as moral agents of the global climate system and attributing them financial reparations help balance the distribution of burdens and benefits. The proposed framework for quantifying and attributing reparations to major carbon fuel producers will inform future efforts to direct payments to harmed parties. While this will not indemnify them from current or prospective climate litigation, it may, for companies that pay reparations and show strong progress on reducing operational and product emissions, defer or even avoid being named as defendants in future lawsuits. The focus on the fossil fuel industry, despite persistent market distortions, governance, and policy failures common in the fossil fuel world, will help bridge the divide between “the rich” and “the poor” worlds that still hampers climate progress. It would also lead to a fairer distribution of the burden of fighting climate change among the various responsible agents, while at the same time providing necessary funding to mitigate emissions, fund adaptation, and compensate subjects more vulnerable to climate harm such as climate migrants and refugees, Indigenous peoples, racial and ethnic minority communities, people with disabilities, and people who are socially and economically disadvantaged."

Check out the full article on the One Earth website and more info from this Guardian article.

24) Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, say experts.

"The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit. Governments must urgently stop subsidising the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water. Nations must start to manage water as a global common good, because most countries are highly dependent on their neighbours for water supplies, and overuse, pollution and the climate crisis threaten water supplies globally, the report’s authors say.

Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and a lead author of the report, told the Guardian the world’s neglect of water resources was leading to disaster. “The scientific evidence is that we have a water crisis. We are misusing water, polluting water, and changing the whole global hydrological cycle, through what we are doing to the climate. It’s a triple crisis.”

Check out the article which has a link to the full report.

25) Joelle Gergis - Humanity's Moment - A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope.

Here is a positive experience for those needing a boost and to foster some hope. This webinar from March with Dr Joelle Gergis dives into the subject of climate reality, emotion, self care and hope. It was organised by the Psychology for a Safe Climate group and at 1 hour 22 minutes is a long session but both Lesley and found it very worthwhile putting aside the time to listen to it. The Psychology for a Safe Climate group aims to support people emotionally in facing the climate reality and they state that their purpose is to contribute psychological understanding and support within the community, helping people face the difficult climate reality.

26) Top lawyers defy bar to declare they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters.

This is an interesting development in the UK and highlights the tension between the state trying to maintain an illusion of being in control and members of the public trying to raise the alarm about the emergency that is right in front of us.

"Leading barristers have defied bar rules by signing a declaration saying they will not prosecute peaceful climate protesters or act for companies pursuing fossil fuel projects. They are among more than 120 mostly English lawyers who have signed a declaration vowing to “withhold [their] services in respect of supporting new fossil fuel projects and action against climate protesters exercising their right of peaceful protest”. Noting that climate breakdown represents “a serious risk to the rule of law”, the so-called “declaration of conscience” calls on legal professionals “to act urgently to do whatever they can to address the causes and consequences of the climate and ecological crises and to advance a just transition.

Tim Crosland, the director of the environmental law pressure group Plan B, which together with Maugham’s Good Law Project coordinated the declaration, said “behind every new oil and gas deal sits a lawyer getting rich. Meanwhile, it’s the ordinary people of this country, taking a stand against this greed and destruction that the British legal system prosecutes and imprisons, jailing them just for talking about the climate crisis and fuel poverty. The rule of law has been turned on its head. Lawyers are responsible. It’s time to take a stand.”

Check out the full article if you're interested.

27) The Carbon Brief Interview: ‘Loss-and-damage’ finance pioneer Robert Van Lierop.

As countries negotiated the world’s first climate change treaty in 1991, the Pacific island state of Vanuatu made a momentous proposal. It called for “industrialised” nations to pay for the “loss and damage” that islands expected to face as rising sea levels engulfed their lands. The idea was immediately rejected. Yet 31 years later, at the COP27 summit in Egypt, developing countries finally secured agreement on a new fund to deal with loss and damage. The man behind that 1991 proposal was Robert Van Lierop, a US civil rights lawyer who had been enlisted, a decade earlier, to represent the newly-independent Vanuatu at the UN.

Here is a question from the interview with Robert.

Q. As for the loss and damage fund itself, we have this agreement where the funds will be set up, but should there be concerns given developed countries have missed climate finance targets in the past?

A. RVL: Absolutely. That’s always the problem with the developed countries…They are very prone to make all kinds of promises. It doesn’t matter if it’s to Indigenous populations, small-island countries or former colonies…They make grandiose promises, but then there are always excuses why they can’t deliver. They like to trot out the political pressures that they face at home, as if the developing countries don’t also have political pressures at home – political pressures to get results, and to get justice. The fight for justice is barely beginning, globally.

Check out the full interview.

28) CEO of biggest carbon credit certifier to resign after claims offsets worthless.

"David Antonioli to step down from Verra, which was accused of approving millions of worthless offsets used by major companies.
The head of the world’s leading carbon credit certifier has announced he will step down as CEO next month. It comes amid concerns that Verra, a Washington-based nonprofit, approved tens of millions of worthless offsets that are used by major companies for climate and biodiversity commitments, according to a joint Guardian investigation earlier this year."

Check out the full article.

29) The Rising Chorus of Renewable Energy Skeptics.

This thought provoking and challenging item is a follow up to one I put in the March newsletter looking into the issue of availability of minerals required to supply the renewable energy transformation of our energy infrastructure.

“It’s doubling down on the wrong thing: propping up and accelerating the machine that’s eating the planet alive. Barrelling forward on renewable energy is the last thing Earth’s critters would vote for, and would be considered one of the more disruptive decisions we could make. Our quest for a more ecological growth model has resulted in intensified mining of the Earth’s crust to extract the core ingredient — rare metals — with an environmental impact that could prove far more severe than that of oil extraction. Our quest for a more ecological growth model has resulted in intensified mining of the Earth’s crust to extract the core ingredient — rare metals — with an environmental impact that could prove far more severe than that of oil extraction.”

Unfortunately this item begs the question - Are we just exchanging the devastating impacts on our climate from burning fossil fuels for the devastating impacts on our environment and biodiversity from mining rare metals? I believe it is critical that we face these questions openly so we can collectively make the best decisions for the future of all lifeforms on our wonderful planet.

30) Enzyme found that turns air into electricity.

"New Zealand and Australian scientists have made a fairly startling discovery - an enzyme that turns air into electricity. After studying bacteria in soil that can oxidise hydrogen, scientists discovered the enzyme that could offer a new clean source of energy, the only by-product of which is water. Otago University's distinguished professor Greg Cook is part of the team studying this enzyme."

Check out this 5 minute podcast interview with Professor Greg Cook from Otago University if you want to know more about this fascinating new development.

This article on the SciTech Daily website has more details about this discovery. In the article they say "Australian researchers have uncovered an enzyme capable of transforming air into energy. The study, which was recently published in the prestigious journal Nature, shows that the enzyme utilizes small amounts of hydrogen in the air to generate an electrical current. This breakthrough paves the way for the development of devices that can literally generate energy from thin air. In this Nature paper, the researchers extracted the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. They showed that this enzyme, called Huc, turns hydrogen gas into an electrical current. Huc is a “natural battery” that produces a sustained electrical current from air or added hydrogen. While this research is at an early stage, the discovery of Huc has considerable potential to develop small air-powered devices, for example as an alternative to solar-powered devices."

I'd like to finish this newsletter by continuing our previous investigation into the pros and cons of hydrogen as an energy source.

31) Opinion: Green hydrogen is 'escapey, explodey expanded polystyrene'.

These last three items are a continuation of our previous investigation into the pros and cons of hydrogen as an energy source.

This article printed in Stuff was written by Tom Powell and Tim Jones of Coal Action Network. Yes, that's the same Tom Powell who is also co-chair of CKM.

"Green hydrogen – “Escapey, explodey expanded polystyrene”. This is how technology advisor Michael Liebreich recently described hydrogen in Threadreader. In some renewable energy circles, green hydrogen is all the rage. It can be made from ordinary water and electricity. It can be burnt like fossil gas but without the greenhouse gas emissions. And, it can be used in fuel cells to make electricity again. What is there not to like? Quite a lot, it turns out. The usual argument against using green hydrogen for energy is the abysmally poor efficiency of turning electricity into hydrogen and then turning it back into useful energy. Presently, a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle gets back only about 30% of the electrical energy used to make the green hydrogen in powering the vehicle. A typical battery electric vehicle gets back around 80% of the electrical energy used to charge its batteries."

Check out the full article.

32) Is hydrogen really a clean enough fuel to tackle the climate crisis?

Here's a couple of items on the ongoing topic of the pros and cons of using hydrogen as an alternative fuel. The first is a Guardian article attempting to separate the hype from the facts. It's conclusion is that there is a role for hydrogen but it is a limited one. It says - 
"But for most forms of transport (cars, bikes, buses and trains) and heating there are already safer, cleaner and cheaper technologies such as battery-run electric vehicles and heat pumps, so there’s little or no merit in investing time or money with hydrogen. Howarth said: “Renewable electricity is a scarce resource. Direct electrification and batteries offer so much more, and much more quickly. It’s a huge distraction and waste of resources to even be talking about heating homes and passenger vehicles with hydrogen.”

33) The link between hydrogen leaking into our atmosphere and methane accumulation.

This final item is concerning. It  looks at new research highlighting the importance of hydroxyl ions in breaking down atmospheric methane and the role fugitive hydrogen plays in this cycle.  It looks at a recent study claiming that "Potent clean fuel hydrogen could lead to methane accumulation" and "New Hydrogen Research Reminds Us Humanity Just Can't Win With Fuel Alternatives".

In the study they say -

"Hydrogen's potency as a clean fuel could be limited by a chemical reaction, potentially leading to accumulation of methane in the lower atmosphere, according to new research. This is because hydrogen gas easily reacts in the atmosphere with the same molecule primarily responsible for breaking down methane, a potent greenhouse gas. If hydrogen emissions exceed a certain threshold, that shared reaction will likely lead to methane accumulation in the atmosphere - with decades-long climate consequences, the research from Princton University, US and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association said."

I recommend reading these articles as they contain some critical new information that needs to be further investigated before we humans rush into a new technology thinking it might help save us from our self-inflicted predicament.

Nga mihi, Budyong.

March 2023 CKM Newsletter

Welcome to the first newsletter for 2023. As usual there are a range of items for people to browse and choose anything they find of interest.

The major disruptive weather events that NZ has experienced this year are on the top of my mind as they no doubt are for most people. It is an unfortunate reality with human beings that we seem to have extreme difficulty making the big decisions when consequences of our actions seem far away in the future. It was inevitable that the time would come when we would be face to face with what global warming means in our daily lives. My heart hurts for those caught in the midst of these disruptive events and for the loss and suffering they are experiencing. Knowing that as a species we have prevaricated for so long largely due to politics and economics only amplifies that pain.
The simple physics of it is that for every degree warmer the atmosphere gets it can hold 7% more water. All the warnings that climate scientists and activists have been giving for decades now have not resulted in us making any really significant changes to the upwards global trajectory of GHG emissions. Our Finance Minister and now Cyclone Recovery Minister says we will be hearing two words much more often now - Managed Retreat. I highly recommend listening to this interview by Kim Hill on February 25th titled "How to manage managed retreat", if you have not heard it yet. She talks with Jonathan Boston, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University, Boston and a contributor to the recently released working paper focussed on developing recommendations for the government's proposed Climate Adaptation Act. He is blunt in his assessment of the challenges we all face.

I have also taken a particular focus this time looking at the "Future of Food and Agriculture in a low emissions world," as this is a topic that has been recently discussed amongst some CKM members. This discussion also feeds into two of the other topics - Limits to Growth and Degrowth that are currently getting considerable attention in some circles.

LOCAL

1) Media articles written by CKM member Tom Powell since the last newsletter.

09/12/2022 - Opinion article: “Our Broken Electricity Market”
17/12/2022 - Opinion article: “What Does It Mean, Anthropocene?”
26/01/2023 - Opinion article: “High Noon in Aotearoa”

2) Climate Action Week -

Marlborough Climate Action week was organised by Catherine van der Meulen and the Action Week organising committee. It was held from February 13th -17th and "designed to create awareness, develop our Marlborough business community's knowledge by embracing education, and take action towards creating a low carbon emissions, highly productive, and thriving community, no matter what stage of the journey you are at."

Check out this document for further information about the week's activities and future planned activities.
 
Marlborough Express also published a series of Opinion pieces as a part of the Climate Action Week activities with a wide representation of views shared by a members of the Marlborough community. 

Here are links to the different contributions if you haven't caught up with them yet.

Catherine van der Meulen - "Knowledge plus passion inspires collaborative movement "
Don Quick, CKM member - "Climate is central to Marlborough's rivers, forests and Sounds"
Kathryn Cannan, CKM member - "Enforceable policy needed for a green growth future"
Tom Powell, CKM member - "Will humanity's hubris cause permanent damage?"
James Wilson, CKM member - "Former farmer's 'trifecta' of reasons for a plant-based diet"
Ruihana Lewis, Te Hoiere Project Te Pou Hapai Taiao for Ngati Kuia - "Restoring the mauri to our special places"
Edwin Massey, New Zealand Winegrowers sustainability manager  -  "Wine centre keeps industry ahead of global trends"
Glen Proffit from Southern Water Engineering - "Preparing ourselves to weather the storm"
Amber McNamara, a business management consultant - "Collaboration is key for primary industry transition"
Tanya Pouwhare, NZ Ethical Employers chief executive  - "Climate change is a human rights issue"
Jo Griggs, chair of the Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards - "Good environmental care is good business"
Michael Wentworth, manager of sustainability and strategic projects at Yealands Wine Group - "Ambitious plans at Yealands Wine Group"
Matt Sutherland, Dog Point general manager - "The organic, biodiverse, native planted vineyards at Dog Point"
Edwin Massey from NZ Winegrowers - "Making sure future generations can still be winemakers"
Heather Donachie from Export Logistics - "Exporters urged to consider more sustainable ways"
Heather Keynton Turnbull from Awatere Valley Trust - "Healthy soils grow healthy food and people"
Sean Weaver from Ekos - "Imagine if the economy actually protected the planet"
Lee Watkins from MyNoke - "What worms can do for your company's waste"
Ailie Suzuli from Environhub Marlborough - "Nurturing nature is action against climate change"
Ben Leggett from Elemental Distillers - "Distiller shares his unique practices"
Alistair Schorn from Marlborough Chamber of Commerce - "What businesses need to know about emissions regulations"
Alec McNeil, MDC Solid Waste Manager - "Why should consumers pay for waste when producers could?"
Tracey Goss from Kaituna Sawmill - "Sawmill team seeks sustainability, finds opportunity"
Ruihana Lewis, Te Hoiere Project Te Pou Hapai Taiao for Ngati Kuia - "Restoring the mauri to our special places"

3) CKM submission to Natural and Built Environment Bill and Spatial Planning Bill.

If interested you can check out a copy of our full submission put together by Tom Powell. These two new bills are part of an important revision of the existing Resource Management Act (RMA).

4) CKM submission to MDC - National Policy Statement of Freshwater Management. (NPSFM)

In our submission we start with the following words - "We have an interest in how continuing climate and biodiversity degradation might impact the Marlborough community and how we can best prepare for the changing environment we all live in. The NPSFM has identified the four compulsory values, which are required to apply to freshwater management in Marlborough; ecosystem health, human contact, threatened species and mahinga kai. We agree with these values. Our main concern and focus is on and around “vision and values”. For us this relates primarily to ecosystem health, as we perceive the  three other values to be secondary and totally reliant on the prioritising of that ecosystem health. Human contact and mahinga kai gathering need to be subservient so that the magnitude of these activities is governed by the needs of the ecosystem as a whole. Threatened species clearly have their threats reduced in a healthy ecosystem."

You can read our full submission if interested.

5) Firm that makes fence posts from soft plastics to build Blenheim factory.

"A New Zealand company that makes fence posts out of soft plastic will soon be manufacturing its products in the South Island. That means collection points for the Soft Plastics Recycling Scheme are expected to be re-established across Nelson and Marlborough.
Future Post managing director Jerome Wenzlick said the company started making fence posts nearly five years ago in Auckland, using soft plastic waste. "We've built all our own machinery and figured out how to use all the different types of waste plastic that no one else can use and get our production up so we can make a post that's the same or better than wood, which is what we're up against."
It is now experiencing strong demand for its products across the country, particularly from wineries in the top of the South Island."

Check out the full article on the RNZ website. You can also learn more about Future Post on their website.

NATIONAL

6) Huntley power station transition from coal to biomass.

Genesis Energy have just completed trials to demonstrate the technical viability for using 100% biomass as a renewable fuel option for the existing three Rankine units. The trial has been done using 1000 tonne of black torrefied wood pellets imported from Canada. Black pellets (often referred to as biocoal) have been chosen because they are essentially a drop-in replacement for coal. The biomass must be ground to a consistency like talcum powder so needs to be hard. The fuel also must be able to be left uncovered in the rain without degrading. Black pellets are both hard and non-hydroscopic so large fuel storage sheds don’t have to be built.

The pellets for the trial are not currently available in New Zealand but hopefully the success of these trials will encourage investment in a New Zealand based black pellet manufacturing facility. If black pellet fuel is available, the transition to biomass fuel will allow Huntley Power Station to remain in the electricity supply market providing a hydro firming insurance role which will allow greater sourcing of electricity from wind and solar resources.

Scott Westbury from Genesis Energy is running a webinar on March 2nd at 2pm. This webinar will outline the opportunities for investment in processing wood residues from forest harvest and wood processing, into a high value biocoal. Fonterra has joined with Genesis Energy to investigate production of black pellets from local wood residues. Additionally, there is interest from steel makers who wish to replace their coal use, and other power station operators in Asia who are also seeking sources of biocoal.

If you are interested you can learn more and register for the webinar here.

7) Environmental Law Initiative.

The Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) are a registered charitable trust whose mission is to ensure the effective protection of New Zealand’s natural resources. They are advised by a small team of experts in environmental law, policy, science, ecology and management.

I have been getting their newsletter and have been impressed with the successes they are having in the legal field. I am a strong supporter of using the  legal system to challenge the powerful and the vested interests who too often put the needs of the environment low on their priorities list instead of at the very top where it must be if we are to retain a liveable planet.

Check out their website and subscribe to their newsletter if you're interested.

8) Forest & Bird "Room for Rivers" campaign.

Forest and Bird have recently launched their "Room for Rivers" campaign.
If you're interested you can download a pdf file with info about the campaign.

With increasing risk of extreme rainfall events associated with climate change it must be time to look seriously at this option being highlighted by Forest and Bird with a national campaign titled "Room for Rivers". Countries such as The Netherlands have successfully reduced flooding risks by taking this sort of action and giving their waterways more room to move during high rainfall events.
Following consultation with flood management experts and practitioners, Forest & Bird proposes the Government adopt three steps to kickstart improved river management in Aotearoa and better protect communities and wildlife:

• Develop a national Room for Rivers plan, including strategic managed retreat from high-risk flood plains. Embed this modern approach to flood management in resource management and climate legislation.
• Appoint an advisory group of experts to support the development of the Room for Rivers national plan and create practical guidance for councils on how to incorporate this and other nature-based solutions into district and regional flood management programmes.
• Establish a $500m contestable flood mitigation fund to support councils to undertake Room for Rivers projects in their communities and educate the public about the benefits of working with nature to reduce flooding risks.

9) IAG seeks three step plan for natural hazard prone New Zealand homes – commits to being part of the solution.

This initiative from IAG was launched back in August last year. With the recent devastating flood and storm events in Auckland and from Cyclone Gabrielle this topic will be getting a lot more attention now!

IAG is calling for three practical, collaborative steps to be taken which will lead to a real reduction in the flood risk faced by some of New Zealand’s most exposed communities. IAG New Zealand CEO Amanda Whiting says: “Climate change is a critical issue for our country and it’s already having serious impacts on the lives of New Zealanders through more frequent and intense storms, floods, droughts, wildfires and, in time, rising sea levels. “The most important thing we can do is ensure people are not placed in harm’s way and do not suffer the loss and disruption caused by a flood event. Avoiding the impact on lives and people’s wellbeing must be the priority."

The three steps are:

•     A joint government and private sector project to build a common understanding of priority flood-prone communities

First, we need to create a common understanding of which flood prone locations are most in need of support to reduce the risk they face. This can be done through a formal project between central and local government, and other stakeholders to identify and prioritise flood prone locations. This project needs to take into account current exposure, quality of current flood protections, the financial position of councils, the deprivation and resilience of communities, the availability and affordability of insurance and lending, as well as current flood protection investment plans and projects.

•     Implement a National Policy Statement to cease development in flood-prone locations

Second, we need to stop building in flood prone locations, so the problem doesn’t get worse. This would best be achieved through a National Policy Statement developed by the Ministry for the Environment | Manatū Mō Te Taiao working alongside local government and other stakeholders to develop a statement that requires councils to avoid new development, or intensification of existing development, within locations that are exposed to flooding that may occur more frequently than one in 50-years.

•     Establish a national programme of investment in flood protection

We need to develop and carry out a programme to improve flood defences in our most at-risk communities. This would involve the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission | Te Waihanga working with Treasury  |  Te Tai Ōhanga, local government and other stakeholders to develop a business case and a programme of work for investment in flood protection infrastructure for priority flood-prone locations.

Check out the full article.

10)  Government baulks at raising carbon price as cost of living bites.

Cabinet has rejected a move that would have raised petrol and electricity costs. But now big polluters can keep gaming the carbon system and banking cheap credits – potentially putting New Zealand’s climate goals in jeopardy. Under the Emissions Trading Scheme, big carbon emitters have to pay for every tonne of emissions – one of the Government’s major tools for doing its bit on global heating.

Cabinet papers show the Government has gone against the advice of both the independent Climate Change Commission and Climate Change Minister James Shaw. Shaw recommended following the commission’s advice and letting the price of carbon rise – and stopping pumping extra credits into the market so frequently. That would have given big polluters more incentive to rein in planet-heating emissions, as heat waves, floods and droughts keep worsening. Instead, Cabinet has chosen to allow only small, inflation-linked price rises.

Check out the full Stuff article.

11) The power of eDNA.

This article from Forest and Bird is about the son of a CKM founding member Pete Wilkinson. It is written by Jazmine Ropner and titled "Meet the man determined to change the face of conservation in Aotearoa one genetic "barcode" at a time."

"Hidden away among the beige warehouses where movies are made on Wellington’s Miramar Peninsula, Wilderlab scientists are testing an environmental DNA sample sent in from college students who sampled water from two streams in Fiordland National Park.
The results are exciting – the Fiordland College students have discovered a previously unknown population of a rare native fish – the Gollum galaxias! This information will help local efforts to protect and restore the population’s habitat (see right).
Environmental DNA is genetic material shed from living things into water, air, or soil. Samples can be taken from a local river, beach, or reserve and sent to a lab for analysis.
Over the past three years, eDNA has been quietly sparking a change in conservation – and Wilderlab has been at the forefront of making the technology more accessible to New Zealanders.
The company’s easy-to-use eDNA sampling kits and lab-testing service are allowing more New Zealanders to discover the full range of species living in their backyards.

At the helm of the operation is founder and principal scientist Shaun Wilkinson. He started his working career as a chef in Palmerston North before moving to Wellington and discovering a passion for biology while studying marine science at University of Victoria."

Check out the full article on the F&B website and more information on the Wilderlab website. 

12) Environment Select Committee submission on the Sustainable Biofuels Obligation Bill.

This is a follow up to an item I put in the August newsletter last year. This submission from the group "Low Carbon Kapiti" gives an good analysis of the serious issues associated with introducing a Biofuels Obligation in NZ. It looks at issues that have already arisen in jurisdictions overseas where Biofuels have been mandated and raises very important questions about how realistic it is for NZ to be attempting to introduce a regime that appears to have failed in the US, the EU and Brazil.

Here is one example they highlight -

Biofuels obligations create subsidy-dependent industries that then lobby against reform, change or government U-turns on those obligations. There is no market for liquid biofuels without government mandates, and these mandates do not make biofuels more affordable in the long run – their price is locked to global commodity prices for the crops they are made from. So once fuel suppliers invest in infrastructure for biofuels (e.g. tanks and pipes), they expect a return on their investment, and the only way to get that is if governments keep the legal mandates in place. The EU, Brazil and the USA are locked into this trap. This makes avoiding establishing biofuels obligations or mandates, rather than trying to reform them once they are in place, critical.

Please note that the incoming Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced that this policy was being canned for the time being giving the cost of living crisis as the main reason. Probably a good outcome even if for the wrong reason!

13) Food production in Aotearoa in a perilous state.

You may find this short interview from RNZ interesting if you didn't hear it back in late November. Among striking points - Southland has a collosal dairy factory yet all of Southlands milk is trucked from Christchurch! .... a bit of extra profit trumps the multifarious emissions associated with the overuse of trucks.

14) Heat and eat - The climate impact of food.

"The food system is responsible for up to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. It won’t show up on a supermarket docket, but the production, transport, packaging, refrigeration and distribution of food all add to the climate bill before it even makes it to our mouths. Some foods are much more emissions-intensive to produce than others, though, and that can change depending on where in the world you live and the production techniques used. Research devoted to working out the ‘cradle-to-grave’ emissions cost of all sorts of different foods is growing every day. Here in Aotearoa, researchers at Otago University published a New Zealand-specific food emissions database in 2020, that shows the huge differences between certain groups of food, and even items within those groups."

This article from Stuff is presented in a visual format with easy to read graphs showing the emissions intensity of the different foods we eat. The data comes from an Otago University research project.

15) Degrowth.

This is a topic getting plenty of attention is some circles at the moment. Here are three items from two NZ authors and below a link to an Al Jazeera site.

Jack Santa Barbara from the "Our Climate Declaration" group has written a good article titled "Give progress a chance: Embrace degrowth."

"Continuing to prioritise economic growth is not a recipe for being a good ancestor. Nor is it a recipe for human progress. A large and growing number of scholars from many disciplines, are advocating for a reorientation of our social and political priorities by abandoning economic growth as our overriding priority. Even some progressive economists are making these arguments. This degrowth movement argues for prioritising genuine progress in terms of both human wellbeing and ecological sustainability.  Indeed, these scholars argue that abandoning economic growth is essential for achieving these more important objectives.

While recognising the need for social and economic change, others, mostly economists and business leaders, argue that economic growth is essential to achieve human wellbeing and ecological sustainability. They cite examples of green growth with clean technologies as pointing the way forward. Obviously, both groups cannot be right; their views are mutually exclusive. Green growth and degrowth cannot both provide a guiding framework for a just and sustainable future. Which is most likely to be helpful?"

Dr Catherine Knight has written an article in The Spinoff titled "Why combatting climate change means embracing degrowth"
and another published on the Newsroom website titled "A pathway out of environmental collapse".

Here is an extract:

"The burning of fossil fuels and destruction of ecosystems through the extraction of resources has led to the precipice of a catastrophe. How do we step away from the precipice? Catherine Knight examines what 'degrowth' would look like in a New Zealand context. Many of us are aware by now that we are facing multiple crises: climate change being just one – warming and acidifying oceans, depleted soils, global habitat and biodiversity loss are among the others in this ‘polycrisis’. The Auckland floods have made us acutely aware of how vulnerable our cities are to the ravages of extreme weather, events predicted to become more extreme and frequent as the effects of climate change bed in.

We know that this is not going to get better any time soon. There will be more floods, droughts and other weather events that will cause destruction, economic loss and human distress on a scale that we cannot yet imagine. Even the issues that affect us day to day, such as the cost of living, have at their root the unsustainability of our current economic system."

The XR viewpoint is that "As 2022 comes to a close, it’s time to face some hard truths. 1.5°C is over, and intolerable suffering is on its way. COP has been co-opted by greenwashers and oil lobbyists, and cannot deliver the policies needed to minimise that suffering. Nothing less than total economic transformation is necessary now, meaning a move beyond the infinite growth model of capitalism to the sustainable model of degrowth. It is up to us, as part of a movement of movements, to normalise this idea, rather than the competing fantasy that technology and geoengineering will eventually save the day. Every day we wait, the suffering increases. We don’t have time for fairytales."

XR have provided a link to the Al Jazeera YouTube site "All Hail the Planet" which is a series delving into the social, economic and political forces undermining meaningful global action on climate change - In this clip Ali Rae speaks with economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, economic sociologist Juliet Schor, and development economist Ndongo Samba Sylla about the concept of Degrowth. Jason Hickel concludes by saying - "Until we are able to break free from these growth imperatives, then we're going to be in a situation where we watch continued failure over the coming decades, even as climate breakdown worsens before our very eyes. And so it's important that we understand that this failure to address the problem is not some kind of mistake. There's a structural reason for it. And until we start talking about the underlying economic system then we're going to continue making that fundamental error."

16) More info in the hydrogen debate.

Green Hydrogen: Why NZ's in the box seat.

This item may be of interest to some on the ongoing topic of hydrogen and especially in the NZ context. The inaugural New Zealand Hydrogen Symposium (NZHS-1) took place recently.
You can read about the event on the Otago University website and this report on the "Hereon" website after the event.
It was a multidisciplinary forum for the latest research on hydrogen, and involved local and international experts, iwi, universities, government research agencies, policy and industrial partners.

In this interview Kathryn Ryan from RNZ speaks with one of the symposium's convenors, Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Otago, Sally Brooker, who says New Zealand should take advantage of making green hydrogen to produce chemicals, provide energy, and reduce emissions, and German engineer and professor at Hamburg University of Technology, Professor Martin Kaltschmitt.

Heat pumps ‘up to three times cheaper’ than green hydrogen in Europe, study finds.

“Green” hydrogen, made by splitting water with low-carbon electricity, is unlikely to emerge as a cheap replacement for gas boilers in homes across Europe, according to a new study. The research, published in the journal Energy Conversion and Management, concludes that a green hydrogen heating system would be roughly “two to three times more expensive” than one relying on electric heat pumps in the EU and UK.

Decarbonising heat is a key goal for governments seeking to hit their climate targets and end their reliance on expensive gas, amid a global energy crisis. Heat pumps have been widely accepted by experts as the primary option for cutting the sector’s emissions. However, gas-industry lobbyists and conservative politicians in the EU and UK have continued to make the case for hydrogen.

The new study explores a range of scenarios for cutting emissions from Europe’s heating systems. It concludes that a low-carbon transition that keeps costs down without causing excessive environmental damage is “only possible through electrification via heat pumps”. It found that “blue” hydrogen, which is made using gas with carbon dioxide (CO2) captured, would have been a cost-effective option for a small proportion of properties, based on gas prices at their pre-crisis levels. However, the high gas prices driving the global energy crisis would likely make heating buildings with “blue” hydrogen “less cost-competitive”, one of the study’s authors tells Carbon Brief.

Check out the full article on the Carbon Brief website.

17) Why restoring long-distance passenger rail makes sense in New Zealand – for people and the climate.

"The government has committed the country to decarbonisation targets that require significant cuts to transport-related emissions. But decarbonising long-distance travel is not part of the plan – the national rail operator KiwiRail remains focused on freight.
For those living in larger urban centres with good public transport and biking infrastructure or in 15-minute neighbourhoods, there is far less need to own a car. To make the necessary cuts to transport emissions in our larger cities, we need to re-imagine car ownership as an option rather than a necessity. It might be a lot to lay on the humble train, but civilisation is in a tight spot. We need to collectively halve emissions by 2030, while also laying the groundwork for a truly sustainable future. This means wise use of resources – long-lasting, economical infrastructure based on proven technology, combined with renewable electricity. Trains do that."

Check out the full article in The Conversation.

INTERNATIONAL

18) Could hemp be a key tool in fight against climate change?

In all the debates on how to curb climate change, hemp is hardly mentioned. Better known as cannabis, modern varieties of hemp are too weak to use as narcotics, but they are extremely efficient at absorbing and locking up carbon.

Hemp is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world and can grow 4 metres high in 100 days. Research suggests hemp is twice as effective as trees at absorbing and locking up carbon, with 1 hectare (2.5 acres) of hemp reckoned to absorb 8 to 22 tonnes of CO2 a year, more than any woodland. The CO2 is also permanently fixed in the hemp fibres, which can go on to be used for many commodities including textiles, medicines, insulation for buildings and concrete; BMW is even using it to replace plastics in various car parts.

Check out the full article.

This associated research Paper is on "Carbon storage potential in natural fiber composites." The results in this study show that use of natural fibers in thermoplastics have great potential to act as sustainable ‘sink’ for atmospheric carbon dioxide and at the same time saving non-renewable resources. The importance and urgency to expedite research activities in this area can be further augmented by the fact that consumption of different kinds of composites is growing very rapidly in various applications.
 
19) COP15: Everything you need to know about the biodiversity negotiations in Montreal.

For anyone wanting to learn more about the COP15 Biodiversity Conference, which was held in Montreal last December I found this website very informative for gaining some background understanding. The organisation is called "Edie" and their website says they are a trusted and integral part of the workflow of more than 100,000 sustainability, energy and environmental professionals. The website delivers daily news and commentary, exclusive interviews and research, industry reports and business guides, videos, webinars and podcasts.

I was particularly interested in the proposal "to mandate nature-related disclosures for all large businesses this decade." The opportunities for "greenwashing" will of course be there but the intention seems good.

In their report they say -

"Global collaborative initiative Business for Nature has convened more than 330 businesses and financial institutions from 52 countries to engage with policymakers on matters relating to the private sector’s impacts on biodiversity. It wants to see a strong mission statement for a nature-positive world. Ahead of COP15, it is specifically campaigning for a strong agreement for the treaty to require nations to mandate nature-related disclosures for all large businesses this decade. This call to action is being made through the ‘make it mandatory’ campaign, whose supporters include Ikea, Nestle, Unilever and H&M Group. The mandate, the group argues, should cover all large businesses and financial institutions and should be coupled with a target for these actors to at least halve negative impacts.

‘Make it mandatory’ is part of a broader set of recommendations from Business for Nature, which can be seen in full here. edie recently interviewed Business for Nature’s executive director Eva Zabey to find out more about these recommendations, including why there is such strong business support and what the final treaty would look like in an ideal situation."

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) website provides a summary of the outcomes of the Conference.
Here is an extract:

The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) consists of four overarching global goals to protect nature, including: halting human-induced extinction of threatened species and reducing the rate of extinction of all species tenfold by 2050; sustainable use and management of biodiversity to ensure that nature’s contributions to people are valued, maintained and enhanced; fair sharing of the benefits from the utilization of genetic resources, and digital sequence information on genetic resources; and that adequate means of implementing the GBF be accessible to all Parties, particularly Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director, Inger Andersen, emphasized that implementation is now key: “Success will be measured by our rapid and consistent progress in implementing what we have agreed to. The entire UN system is geared to support its implementation so we can truly make peace with nature.”

The GBF also features 23 targets to achieve by 2030, including:

• Effective conservation and management of at least 30 per cent of the world’s land, coastal areas and oceans. Currently, 17 percent of land and *8 per cent of marine areas are under protection
• Restoration of 30 per cent of terrestrial and marine ecosystems
• Reduce to near zero the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance and high ecological integrity
• Halving global food waste
• Phasing out or reforming subsidies that harm biodiversity by at least $500 billion per year, while scaling up positive incentives for biodiversity conservation and sustainable use
• Mobilizing at least $200 billion per year from public and private sources for biodiversity-related funding
• Raising international financial flows from developed to developing countries to at least US$ 30 billion per year
• Requiring transnational companies and financial institutions to monitor, assess, and transparently disclose risks and impacts on biodiversity through their operations, portfolios, supply and value chains

20) Addressing Climate Change Will Not “Save the Planet”.

A group of conservationists took up the question of climate and extinctions last year in the journal "Conservation Letters", warning that “threats to biodiversity are increasingly seen through the single myopic lens of climate change.” The authors, who titled their article “An inconvenient misconception: Climate change is not the principal driver of biodiversity loss,” included Joel Berger, a wildlife biologist at Colorado State University; evolutionary biologist Andrew Dobson, who teaches at Princeton; and Tim Caro, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of California, Davis. “There is an assumption,” they observed, “that climate change is now the most important ‘horseman of the biodiversity apocalypse’” — despite this being “at best premature.”

When it comes to effects on wildlife, climate change is more like a mule, slow and plodding. Yes, a warmed atmosphere is projected to be a significant factor in the extinction crisis in future decades, but what’s destroying species today is habitat fragmentation and loss, overhunting and overexploitation, agricultural expansion, pollution, and industrial development. It isn’t climate change that caused a 69 percent loss in total wildlife populations between 1970 and 2018, according to a World Wildlife Fund study published this year. The cause is too many people demanding too much from ecosystems, or human overshoot of the biophysical carrying capacity of the Earth.
Overshoot is a product of both excessive numbers and rising affluence. Access to the things that create what we call quality of life, like indoor lighting and temperature controls, especially air conditioning; more diverse dietary choices, especially meat; and greater access to transportation, especially air travel — all signs of rising affluence, all delightful if you are a human, yet all demand more energy and material inputs that involve scouring and denuding more wildlands and animal habitat to feed, clothe, house, and energize burgeoning humanity.
According to the co-authors of the Conservation Letters piece, we are “dangerously ignoring” this reality and instead doubling down on the “distortion” that climate mitigation is all that matters to protecting wildlife. Over the last 30 years, the proportion of scientific papers closely tying climate change and global warming to changes in patterns of biodiversity has “steadily increased,” according to their analysis. Media coverage of climate change in relation to biodiversity has followed suit, repeating and compounding the error. The net result of this “misguided focus on climate change” has been the undermining of conservation science “as an evidence-based scientific discipline.” As Dobson put it to me, “If conservation biologists don’t take a balanced look at the evidence, they can’t claim to be evidence-based.”

The crux of the problem is that mainstream environmentalists have siloed climate change as a phenomenon apart from the broad human ecological footprint, separate from deforestation, overgrazing of livestock, megafauna kill-off, collapsing fisheries, desertification, depleted freshwater, soil degradation, oceanic garbage gyres, toxification of rainfall with microplastics, and on and on — the myriad biospheric effects of breakneck growth. Climate change is “but one symptom of an environmentally dysfunctional system of constant growth of economies and populations,” ecologist William Rees, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, told me. “The meta-problem that we need to keep our eyes on,” Rees said, is ecological overshoot. Modern techno-industrial culture, he writes, “is systematically — even enthusiastically — consuming the biophysical basis of its own existence.” Rees describes this as a malignant process, humanity as cancer.

Check out the full article on The Intercept website.

21) The Future of Food and Agriculture in a low emissions world.

This is a topic with a wide range of views. I wanted to do my best to provide any interested readers with a range of information from different sources. Agriculture, especially animal farming is a significant contributor to global emissions and we have to face up this fact if we seriously wish to achieve living in a carbon zero world by 2050.

The first report is one published by Rethinkx. I have included material from this organisation in a previous newsletter and this report from 2019 is titled "Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030 - The Second Domestication of Plants and Animals, the Disruption of the Cow, and the Collapse of Industrial Livestock Farming." It presents a convincing case for the disruptive potential of Precision Fermentation (PF) for producing food protein and in particular animal protein both meat and dairy. I have also come across a counter perspective that provides an equally convincing case arguing that the Rethinkx report has misrepresented the energy and input costs of producing protein in this way. For those who are interested in the growing interest in this technology and the big claims being made by some I recommend reading further.

You will have to make up your own mind about the different claims being made.

Here is an extract from the Executive Summary of the Rethinkx report:

We are on the cusp of the deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago. This is primarily a protein disruption driven by economics. The cost of proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar. They will also be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. This means that, by 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal-derived products they replace. The impact of this disruption on industrial animal farming will be profound. By 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50% and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt. All other livestock industries will suffer a similar fate, while the knock- on effects for crop farmers and businesses throughout the value chain will be severe. This is the result of rapid advances in precision biology that have allowed us to make huge strides in precision fermentation, a process that allows us to program micro- organisms to produce almost any complex organic molecule. These advances are now being combined with an entirely new model of production we call Food-as-Software, in which individual molecules engineered by scientists are uploaded to databases – molecular cookbooks that food engineers anywhere in the world can use to design products in the same Food&Agriculture way that software developers design apps. This model ensures constant iteration so that products improve rapidly, with each version superior and cheaper than the last. It also ensures a production system that is completely decentralized and much more stable and resilient than industrial animal agriculture, with fermentation farms located in or close to towns and cities. This rapid improvement is in stark contrast to the industrial livestock production model, which has all but reached its limits in terms of scale, reach, and efficiency. As the most inefficient and economically vulnerable part of this system, cow products will be the first to feel the full force of modern food’s disruptive power. Modern alternatives will be up to 100 times more land efficient, 10-25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time efficient, and 10 times more water efficient. They will also produce an order of magnitude less waste. Modern foods have already started disrupting the ground meat market, but once cost parity is reached, we believe in 2021-23, adoption will tip and accelerate exponentially. The disruption will play out in a number of ways and does not rely solely on the direct, one-for-one substitution of end products. In some markets, only a small percentage of the ingredients need to be replaced for an entire product to be disrupted. The whole of the cow milk industry, for example, will start to collapse once modern food technologies have replaced the proteins in a bottle of milk – just 3.3% of its content. The industry, which is already balancing on a knife edge, will thus be all but bankrupt by 2030. This is not, therefore, one disruption but many in parallel, with each overlapping, reinforcing, and accelerating one another. Product after product that we extract from the cow will be replaced by superior, cheaper, modern alternatives, triggering a death spiral of increasing prices, decreasing demand, and reversing economies of scale for the industrial cattle farming industry, which will collapse long before we see modern technologies produce the perfect, cellular steak.

Chris Smaje who has a blog in the UK called Small Farm Future has published a critique of the Rethinkx report written by a guest writer he called Steve L. and titled FOOD MANUFACTURED IN FACTORIES VS. FOOD GROWN ON FARMS. Steve challenges the ReThinkx claim that - “Our analysis uses sugar (glucose) as the main feedstock, with efficiency trending from 3kgs of feedstock per 1kg of protein produced (a conversion ratio of 3:1) toward a ratio of less than 2:1 by 2030. There is also scope for other carbohydrates to be used for feedstock.” (page 65 - “Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030”)

In Steve L's report he outlines the topic as follows "There are apparently two main approaches to these manufactured foods: biological and chemical. The biological approach includes ‘precision fermentation’ and cell-based meat, and the chemical approach (including ‘power to food’) typically starts with the electrolysis of water to obtain hydrogen which is used to make tryglycerides or other edible compounds."
In his report he references a variety of reports and analyses the Rethinkx claims, essentially arguing that they are not supportable by the evidence, and quoted “David Humbird, a UC Berkeley-trained chemical engineer who spent over two years researching the report and found that "the cell-culture process will be plagued by extreme, intractable technical challenges at food scale. In an extensive series of interviews with The Counter, he said it was “hard to find an angle that wasn’t a ludicrous dead end.” Humbird likened the process of researching the report to encountering an impenetrable “Wall of No”—his term for the barriers in thermodynamics, cell metabolism, bioreactor design, ingredient costs, facility construction, and other factors that will need to be overcome before cultivated protein can be produced cheaply enough to displace traditional meat.”

If you wish check out Steve L's full report.

Below is an extract from another article challenging the claims being made for Precision Fermentation etc. This is a long and thorough analysis of the issues associated with producing lab-grown meat and the very real challenges likely to be faced by those planning to radically scale up production of these products. It is written by Joe Fassler from The Counter website. He quotes Paul Wood, a former pharmaceutical industry executive with extensive experience in precision fermentation processes used to manufacture vaccines and other scientists with experience in the PF field. Wood knows from his experience how extremely technical, resource-intensive, and expensive the processes are and doesn't understand how costly biomanufacturing techniques could ever be used to produce cheap, abundant human food.

Joe Fassler says:

"But the truth is this: For cultured meat to move the needle on climate, a sequence of as-yet-unforeseen breakthroughs will still be necessary. We’ll need to train cells to behave in ways that no cells have behaved before. We’ll need to engineer bioreactors that defy widely accepted principles of chemistry and physics. We’ll need to build an entirely new nutrient supply chain using sustainable agricultural practices, inventing forms of bulk amino acid production that are cheap, precise, and safe. Investors will need to care less about money. Germs will have to more or less behave. It will be work worthy of many Nobel prizes—certainly for science, possibly for peace. And this expensive, fragile, infinitely complex puzzle will need to come together in the next 10 years. On the other hand, none of that could happen." and “It’s a fable driven by hope, not science, and when the investors finally realize this the market will collapse.” and
"But Renninger finds it “frustrating” to see so many resources going into cultured meat.
“It is a zero-sum game, to a certain extent,” he said. Money we spend chasing cultured meat is money we can’t use on converting coal plants to biomass, or scaling solar and wind, or modernizing concrete and steel. There’s a reason that the U.S. government employs people like Humbird to do rigorous due diligence on attractive new ideas. When billions are spent on science that doesn’t come together, the biggest losers aren’t really the private companies and trade associations, or the class of professional investors who get rich on speculative tech. Instead, the public loses out—and we lose time we don’t have.
As Humbird put it, “If society pays for it and it doesn’t work out, then society’s left holding the bag.”
The environmental ravages we face are vast, destabilizing, and encroaching on our real lives right now. The fires, the floods, are already at our door. In all this, it would be so good to know we have a silver bullet. But until solid, publicly accessible science proves otherwise, cultured meat is still a gamble—a final trip to the casino, when our luck long ago ran out. We should ask ourselves if that’s a chance we want to take."

Check out the full article from The Counter website.

22) Lab-made milk: getting the creaminess without the climate pollution.

Here is an extract from another article where claims are being made that large scale production of lab-grown dairy products are inevitable.

For 10,000 years, we’ve done the same thing to produce a drink of milk. Farms have cleared land to grow grass, raised cows, impregnated the animals, taken the calves aside, and milked their herds. Over that time, consumers developed a considerable appetite for cows’ milk, which appears in everything from yoghurt and cheese to biscuits, chocolate and sports shakes. But in the past 50 years, we’ve spotted something going very wrong with the climate, and now we’re left with limited time to avoid catastrophic consequences. And the source of dairy milk – methane-belching cows – is a significant contributor to that problem, particularly in Aotearoa.

That knowledge led dairy experts, food scientists and biologists – including a number of Kiwis – to invest in a different way to produce milk. Instead of using a large, sentient mammal to make dairy, Matt Gibson uses microorganisms. The resulting food offers an appealing climate benefit: zero planet-heating methane being belched into the atmosphere.

You can check out the full article from Stuff and another article titled "Is precision fermentation the future for food?" offering a counter view in the NZ context.

23) Vertical Farming Has Found Its Fatal Flaw.  

Europe’s energy crisis is forcing companies to switch strategies or close down. The industry’s future hangs in the balance. Just six months ago, the vibe from Europe’s biggest vertical farm company was unrelentingly optimistic, so what changed? According to Cindy van Rijswick, a strategist at the Dutch research firm RaboResearch, several pressures that have always existed for vertical farms have really come to a head in 2022. For starters, the industry is extremely vulnerable to increases in electricity prices. Powering all of those plant-growing LEDs uses a lot of electricity, and between December 2020 and July 2022 consumer energy prices in the EU went up by nearly 58 percent. Eighteen months ago, European vertical farms might have spent around 25 percent of their operational costs on electricity, but that might have gone up to around 40 percent, estimates van Rijswick.

You can check out the full article on wired.com

24) Is There Enough Metal to Replace Oil?

This item looks at trying to address some of the big unanswered questions about just what quantities of minerals we have to access to make a transition from a fossil fuelled to a renewable energy world and what economically accessible reserves we currently know about.

In the article they say in answer to the question "Is there enough metal to replace oil? -

The short answer: No, not even close! Nations of the world are only too aware that fossil fuels need to be phased out for two reasons. First, oil is a finite commodity. It’ll run out in time. Secondly, fossil fuel emissions such as CO2 are destroying the planet’s climate system. However, a recent study puts a damper on the prospects of phasing out fossil fuels in favor of renewables. More to the point, a phase out of fossil fuels by mid century looks to be a nearly impossible Sisyphean task. It’s all about quantities of minerals/metals contained in Mother Earth. There aren’t enough.

Simon Michaux, PhD, Geological Survey Finland has done a detailed study of what’s required to phase out fossil fuels in favor of renewables, to wit:

“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues.” (Source: Simon P. Michaux, Associate Research Professor of Geometallurgy Unit Minerals Processing and Materials Research, Geological Survey of Finland, August 18, 2022 – Seminar: What Would It Take To Replace The Existing Fossil Fuel System?)

THE PAST – “An industrial ecosystem of unprecedented size and complexity, that took more than a century to build with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of cheap energy the world has ever known (oil) in abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and unlimited mineral resources.” (Michaux)

THE PRESENT – “We now seek to build an even more complex system with very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, with an unprecedented number of human population, embedded in a deteriorating environment.” (Michaux)

Current mineral reserves are not adequate to resource metal production to manufacture the generation of renewable energy technology, as current mining is not even close to meeting the expected demand for one generation of renewable technology.

The article highlights how easy it is to make big plans and claims for how we could phase out fossil fuels without asking the critical questions about what resources Papatuanuku can actually realistically provide for us. We have to face up to the fact we all live on Spaceship Earth with a finite quantity of resources available to us and somehow learn to live within our means.

They provide the following figures. No doubt some new reserves will be discovered and maybe new ways of accessing minerals like lithium will be developed such as extracting it economically from geothermal fluids but it still appears as if there are some major obstacles ahead looking at these figures.

The total metals required for one generation of technology to phase out fossil fuels is listed by Required Production followed by Known Reserves for all metals based upon tonnes, as follows:

Copper 4,575,523,674 vs. 880,000,000 – a serious shortfall -reserves only cover 20% of requirements.
Zinc 35,704,918 vs. 250,000,000 – adequate reserves.
Manganese 227,889,504 vs 1,500,000,000 – adequate reserves
Nickel 940,578,114 vs. 95,000,000 – huge shortfall – reserves 10% of requirements.
Lithium 944,150,293 vs. 95,000,000 = huge shortfall – reserves 10% of requirements.
Cobalt 218,396,990 vs. 7,600,000 – huge shortfall – reserves 3.48% of requirements.
Graphite 8,973,640,257 vs. 320,000,000 = huge shortfall – 3.57% reserves of requirements.
Silicon (metallurgical) 49,571,460 – adequate reserves
Silver 145,579 vs. 530,000 – adequate reserves
Vanadium 681,865,986 vs. 24,000,000= huge shortfall -3.52% reserves of requirement
Zirconium 2,614,126 vs.70, 000,000 – adequate reserves.

Check out the full article on the Countercurrents.org website.

This website has useful information and a graph showing historic lithium production up to 2021.

Here are a couple of other relevant articles well worth a read in my opinion if you're interested in the subject of Limits to Growth. They are from the Australian "Pearls and Irritations" website. The first is headed "Reduce consumption, or face reality of civilisational collapse" by Mark Diesendorf. The second is titled "The dilemma of economic growth" by Jan Bruck.

25) Richard Heinberg - The renewable energy transition is failing.

This article provides additional information about challenges we face transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables.

“The transition from fossil fuel to renewables faces an uphill battle. Still, this switch is an essential stopgap strategy to keep electricity grids up and running, at least on a minimal scale, as civilization inevitably turns away from a depleting store of oil and gas. The world has become so dependent on grid power for communications, finance, and the preservation of technical, scientific, and cultural knowledge that, if the grids were to go down permanently and soon, it is likely that billions of people would die, and the survivors would be culturally destitute. In essence, we need renewables for a controlled soft landing. But the harsh reality is that, for now, and in the foreseeable future, the energy transition is not going well and has poor overall prospects.We need a realistic plan for energy descent, instead of foolish dreams of eternal consumer abundance by means other than fossil fuels. Currently, politically rooted insistence on continued economic growth is discouraging truth-telling and serious planning for how to live well with less.”

They make the interesting statement that - "A French preliminary analysis of the energy transition that assumed maximum possible recycling found that a materials supply crisis could be delayed by up to three centuries. But will the circular economy (itself an enormous undertaking and a distant goal) arrive in time to buy industrial civilization those extra 300 years? Or will we run out of critical materials in just the next few decades in our frantic effort to build as many renewable energy devices as we can in as short a time as possible?"

Check out the full article on the resilience.org website.

26) The call to put ‘a price on nature’ can be appealing – but it misunderstands what’s at stake.

In this Guardian article Jeff Sparrow says -

In a piece for The Conversation, the academic John Henneberry explains how when we price nature: "We apply numbers to those features that we consider important, or that are measurable, or both, and we ignore or exclude other features that don’t meet these criteria. […] As a result of it, nature appears more fragmented because we have to slice it into categories and dice those categories into bits before we can value bits of those bits. The sum of these parts is far short of the whole and does not capture the interconnectedness and holism of nature.”

In a context in which we don’t even know how many unique species exist on the planet (estimates range from 5.3 million to 1 trillion, with only 1.6 million of them identified and named), the author Adrienne Buller describes as an extraordinary fantasy the notion that “the biosphere can be readily segmented and ‘unbundled’ into discrete units which can subsequently be individually valued, speculated upon, and exchanged, abstracted entirely from the specifics of time and place.”

It’s a point also made in the open letter, which insists:

"The monetary values being produced do not represent the value of nature’s ecological functions, not even a proxy. Yet misleading figures are not better than nothing but worse than nothing, as they can lead to wrong policy decisions with irreversible consequences. The monetary valuation of nature’s ecological functions can also give a dangerous and misleading illusion of substitutability between critical ecosystemic functions, where one assumes incorrectly that as long as the total monetary value remains stable, nature is in good shape.”

Substitutability is invariably the point of environmental pricing: by transforming the unique components of a biosphere into abstractions as exchangeable as dollars or Euros, it facilitates processes like offsetting, so that destruction in one place can be “compensated” by investment elsewhere.

The NZ website "The Conversation" published another good article by John Henneberry on this topic in 2018 titled "How the neoliberal obsession with valuing nature changes our understanding of it".

27) Carbon Brief.

I have been getting regular summaries from the organisation Carbon Brief. They provide some excellent up to date material on a wide range of climate and energy related matters. You can subscribe on their website if you're interested.

Here is a brief description from their website. - "Carbon Brief is a UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. We specialise in clear, data-driven articles and graphics to help improve the understanding of climate change, both in terms of the science and the policy response. We publish a wide range of content, including science explainers, interviews, analysis and factchecks, as well as daily and weekly email summaries of newspaper and online coverage."

28) 2022 Climate Data summary from Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief recently published its now-customary January deepdive into the key climate data from the previous year. Dr Zeke Hausfather, our climate science contributor, examined and explained all the latest metrics from across the oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature of the planet. His “state of the climate” review showed that 2022 was the warmest year on record for ocean heat content (chart above) and that the past eight years at the planet’s surface have been the warmest since records began in the mid-1800s.

Last year also saw a diverse range of extreme weather events across the globe, as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide levels all reached new record highs. Antarctic sea ice also set a record for its lowest extent. Looking ahead, Zeke predicted that global average surface temperatures in 2023 are most likely to be slightly warmer than 2022 – but are unlikely to set a new all-time record given lingering La Niña conditions in the first half of the year.

Check out the full article for their complete 2022 "State of the Climate" report.

29) A plan for human survival.

Julian Cribb is an Australian science author and author of six books on the human challenge. His latest books on the human future are “Surviving the 21st Century” and “Food or War” and his most recent publication "How to Fix a Broken Planet."
If, like me, you believe we have reached the point where we are living on a Broken Planet that is in urgent need of some major repairs and you have reached the end of this newsletter then you may be interested to read the following article from Julian.

Here is an extract published recently on the Australian website Pearls and Irritations.

"The existential emergency in which all humanity now stands has been building steadily for over half a century. Our capacity to inflict mass harm on ourselves through our own actions has increased exponentially since the end of WWII.

We’ve wiped out two thirds of the world’s large animals, we’re losing water, topsoil, fish and forests at appalling rates, we poison everyone and everything on the planet every day; we’re constructing weapons able to obliterate ourselves many times over. We’re shaping a climate that can render the Earth largely uninhabitable within a few generations. We’re building dangerous technologies over which society has no control. We throw away half our food and ruin the planet trying to grow more. We unleash new plagues every few years and spread them worldwide like wildfire. And we lie, constantly and continually, to ourselves about it all.

These are not the actions of a wise species. Or even, maybe, an intelligent one. Our governments and corporations seem paralysed, unable to grasp the magnitude of the overwhelming, interlinked risks that are engulfing us. The ten megathreats are: extinction and ecological destruction; resource scarcity; global poisoning; a hothouse Earth; new nuclear arms race; pandemic disease; food insecurity; overpopulation; uncontrolled technologies and a global deluge of misinformation about them. Because they are all connected, none of these threats can be tackled on its own. They must all be tackled together.

All of them are consequences of the sheer scale of the human enterprise – overpopulation, overconsumption, overpollution and money are the chief drivers. Mostly, they stem from the 101 billion tonnes of resources we now devour every year to support our ‘lifestyle’ – 12 tonnes each – and the damage this process unleashes on the planet and ourselves.

The good news is that solutions to all these threats already exist."

Check out the full article on the Pearls and Irritations website.

Nga mihi nui, Budyong.