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Here is another selection of items from Marlborough, NZ and worldwide for your interest. I would like to start with a thought provoking quote from the Surplus Energy Economics website. "No amount of financial stimulus, and no rise in price, can produce resources which do not exist in nature. We can lend and print money into existence, but we cannot similarly create the low-cost energy without which the economy cannot function. The reality is that prosperity is a material concept, understandable only in terms of resources in general, and of the “master resource” of energy in particular. As a recent reappraisal by Gaya Herrington confirms, the authors of The Limits to Growth (LtG) were right when, back in 1972, they modelled the Earth as an inter-connected system, and found definite material limitations to expansion. In the narrower fields of economics and finance, it’s becoming ever clearer that we have been living through a quarter-century precursor zone during which the potential for further growth has been exhausted. What we are experiencing now is the disruption which attends the ending of this transitional phase, and the onset of involuntary economic contraction." LOCAL 1) Gravel Bed Rivers (GBR) research on Wairau River and Aquifer. A presentation was made to the MDC Environment Committee on June 15th providing them with the latest information arising from the GBR research program which started in 2019. The purpose of this latest report was "To provide an update to the Committee on research results from the national Gravel Bed Rivers project investigating the hydraulic connection between braided gravel rivers and alluvial aquifers." In their Executive Summary they state - "The prime reasons for the ongoing decline in Wairau Aquifer well levels is less Wairau River water available for recharge and a reduction in the capacity of the natural pathways to move water from the river into the aquifer. This is compounded by demand in some drier seasons." This is not really an unexpected conclusion when we know the river has been modified severely from it's original natural course and is now contained within stopbanks. It is interesting to note that the research team think that water extraction from the river and aquifer is not a major contributor to the ongoing decline trend and that it is the reduced recharge that is of the greatest significance. The research team have proposed - "Having established a conceptual model of how the river-groundwater system work, the river-groundwater system will be modelled more accurately than previously. A model will be used to test the sensitivity of the river-groundwater water balance to riverbed elevation, scouring, and floodway width. The results will be used as a basis for a cost-benefit analysis to see how changes to current river management would impact the local economy." If effective solutions can not be found to stop the decline in the aquifer the consequences for those growing and processing grapes and others who rely on this water for their operations and livelihoods will, in time, be considerable. Add to this the prediction that we are likely to experience hotter and drier summers due to global warming and it is not hard to imagine serious impacts for Marlborough in the decades ahead. I recommend reading the full Executive Summary if you wish to understand more clearly the dynamics of the reduced aquifer recharge process proposed by the research team. It is of further concern to read that "The decline in Wairau Aquifer levels is consistent with widespread deepening of wells over the past 35 years at least. Deepening wells improves individuals access to groundwater but will not prevent aquifer fed springs from drying up as they rely on shallow groundwater breaking the surface for their existence." At the same meeting MDC Groundwater Scientist Peter Davidson also presented the annual Groundwater Quantity State of Environment report. One bit of information from the report (page 12) stood out for me. Peter believes that "based on an extrapolation of the current rate of flow recession, Spring Creek will recede to State Highway 1 by about the year 2100 and by association all of the springs including in Blenheim." I see this as concerning information. One thing our communications with MDC staff have highlighted is that there is not enough evidence of the actual volumes of water being drawn out of the aquifer by water users to ascertain yet how much this water use is impacting the declining trend in the aquifer, as actual water use has only been metered for the last 5 years or so. The lower Wairau aquifer has 3 Freshwater Management Units (FMU's). Levels are set, that if reached, will trigger restrictions for water users in those areas. For anyone interested you can view the Graphs showing the cut-off levels for the Northern (Wratts Rd), Central (Mills and Ford Rd) and Urban (Murphy's Rd) springs FMU's. You can also access the graphs showing long term data from the monitoring wells on the council website here. I have analysed some data supplied by MDC and it is interesting to note that in the dry years of 2015, 2019 and 2020 the aquifer level in the Northern (Wratts Rd) monitoring bore was only 50 - 60mm above the restriction level. This is the bore closest to the Spring Creek headwaters and therefore the best indicator of likely impacts on the springs. In communication with council staff we have learned that there are restrictions on all Wairau Aquifer Sectors except for the Lower Wairau and what they call the Recharge Sector of the main aquifer, which is a large proportion of the total aquifer. The reason the Recharge Sector has no restrictions currently is that MDC weren’t confident at the time of writing the MEP (Marlborough Environment Plan) that they had sufficient understanding of whether reducing cumulative abstraction would result in any benefits on downstream groundwater fed spring flows. They also say the pMEP restrictions are currently 100 % reliable but due to the declining trend in Wairau Aquifer levels restrictions are likely to become permanent at some point in the future, which is why MDC is focusing on what they call “alternative approaches to managing seasonal and boundary effects.” We are not clear what that actually means so will need to do some more research to learn more. It seems that any actions arising from the GBR research, to try and reduce or stop the declining trend in the aquifer are likely to be very expensive and to take decades to prove their worth. Suffice it to say it seems clear that this issue will be ongoing and not easy to resolve. The pMEP restriction regime is currently subject to appeals which should be heard some time in 2023. Maia Hart has also done a good article on the GBR report in Stuff where she says - "New research suggests historic work to narrow the Wairau River could be contributing to declining levels in the recharge aquifer – one of Marlborough’s main water sources. The Wairau aquifer is the main groundwater system underlying the Wairau Plain and a source of irrigation, drinking and stock water. Water seeping from the Wairau River into the aquifer is the main ways it is recharged. Its levels have dropped since 1973, at rates unable to be explained by irrigation." 2) Wairau Aquifer no longer over allocated. MDC put out a media release on June 1st announcing "The Wairau Aquifer Freshwater Management Unit (FMU) allocation status has recently changed from over allocated to having allocation available. This change in allocation is a result of recent water take permit expiries and the application of reasonable use calculations through the provisions of the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan (PMEP)." CKM have had some communications with council and staff about the wisdom of allocating any extra water that becomes available from the aquifer. We wondered if it would be prudent to apply the precautionary principle and have a moratorium on new water allocations until the GBR research is completed, and recommendations and decisions are made about the amount of water reasonably available without seriously impacting the springs and whether the current restrictions levels set in the aquifer may need altering. Unfortunately we have been informed that if water becomes available under current settings they have a legal obligation to make it available. 3) Communications with new F&B Top of the South manager, Scott Burnett and Environment Minister David Parker. I recently wrote a letter to David Parker asking him if there was any allowance in the Resource Management legislation for a moratorium on water allocation for the Wairau Aquifer.. Here is an extract from his reply - "As the Minister for the Environment, I am responsible at a high level for freshwater, however any regulations are the responsibility of councils who determine what consents to issue in accordance with their current regional plan rules. The Marlborough District Council is progressing with the requirement to give effect to the NPS-FM (National Policy Statement - Freshwater Management) in their plan by December 2024, and when they notify their updated plan ahead of that date, I encourage you to make a submission as that is the best mechanism to formally have your say." CKM will want to look at putting a submission in to the council when the time arises. I also met with Scott Burnett who has recently been appointed to replace Debs Martin as the Top of the South manager for Forest & Bird. It was good to meet and establish a connection and we've agreed to work together and network when appropriate. Scott is keen to connect us with the F&B national Freshwater advocate Tom Kay. When the time comes to submit to council on the NPS-FM it would be good for us to combine knowledge and resources. Tom is currently working on a "Room for the River" campaign for F&B and the Wairau would be a perfect example of the detrimental consequences that can result from river containment. I have also received an email from a CKM member, James Wilson, with a link from the Newsroom website to a long and interesting article on this topic, titled "NZ on the cusp of a rivers revolution". You may be interested to see it and read James' contribution in the "comments" section at the bottom. 4) CKM presentation on The Treaty of Waitangi and the 1835 Declaration of Independence. CKM member Don Quick gave a very informative and well received presentation at a recent monthly meeting. For anyone interested you can access the recording here - The password is: PH2!^$ex 5) Top of the South Organic Waste Mapping Study. Have you heard about "insect conversion technology"? Here is some info about an initiative for the Top or the South region to better utilise our food waste. They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Organic waste management is currently a significant cost to the Top of the South community and could be reduced by embracing a multi-sector collaborative upcycling strategy across the region, according to a recent study. An organic waste mapping study jointly funded by Marlborough Research Centre (MRC) and Agricultural and Marketing Research and Development Trust (AGMARDT) found that total volumes in the Top of the South are in excess of 700,000 tons per year. “We now have a comprehensive inventory of the available bio-resources (waste streams) which is a valuable starting point from which to develop regional strategies and multi-sector business opportunities to reduce and upcycle waste,” says MRC’s Chief executive Gerald Hope. The study was led by Plant & Food Research. “The study covered the Marlborough, Nelson and Tasman regions and its purpose was to identify what organic material the Top of the South has to offer for bioconversion technologies and the key stakeholders,” says Project Leader Dr Damian Martin, Science Group Leader -Viticulture & Oenology, Plant & Food Research, who is based at MRC’s Budge Street campus. “The conclusions of the report are promising with respect to the opportunity for an insect bioconversion project in the Top of the South.” Key figures -
6) Sea level rise: we have less time to act than we thought, by Tim Naish. The Nelson Tasman Climate Forum "Climate Action Week" grew out of a response to the Emissions Reduction Plan released earlier this year. One of the guest speakers they organised was Tim Naish who is Professor in Earth Sciences, at the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University. He has leadership roles on the world climate research programme, the scientific committee on Antarctic research and the Antarctic science platform. He has extensively researched sea level rise resulting from global warming of oceans and ice melting, including melting of the Antarctic ice sheets. Tim co-leads the NZ Sea Rise Research Programme working with 30 experts to provide specific estimates of expected sea level rise. This work connects vertical land movement data with climate-driven sea level rise data to forecast locally relevant sea level changes. It includes site specific forecasts for Nelson and Tasman. (I had an item on this in the last newsletter). In this webinar Tim clearly explains the implications for Nelson and Tasman of sea level rise and land movement. Though he did not focus on Marlborough the information is still very interesting for better understanding some of the impacts expected in Te Tauihu. 7) Wireless electricity for the masses could become a reality thanks to Kiwi startup. "Wireless electricity may sound like science fiction - but the founder of a Kiwi startup says one day it may be as common as receiving a text. The technology could allow remote areas like Stewart Island to receive electricity from the mainland, or a homeowner in Germany to buy New Zealand electricity. About 15 minutes from New Plymouth, Auckland-based startup Emrod, with the support of NZ’s future energy centre, Ara Ake, and Powerco, has begun construction on its first outdoor demonstration site for wireless power-beaming technology. Electricity will be converted into an electromagnetic beam between two antennas a few hundred metres apart at the site which is expected to be running by the end of June." This is an interesting technology though I do wonder what the outcome for innocent birds flying through the energy beam would be and whether there might be other unforeseen consequences? They say in the Stuff article - "...the technology has layers of safety, including being placed up high to avoid people crossing through the beam, and having a ‘safety curtain’ that will switch the beam off if anything crosses it." NATIONAL 8) National Climate Adaptation Plan released. Long-term adaptation goals.
A summary is available on the MfE website and the full Plan can also be downloaded there. MBIE have also published information on their website where they say - We need to change how we do things so we can thrive in a different climate to the one we've had in the past. Some areas in New Zealand won't be suitable for building and decisions need to be made about how to limit damage to existing buildings. This will require some changes to the way the building and construction sector operates.Over the next six years, the Building for Climate Change programme will lead the following actions in the National Adaptation Plan:
9) Co-creating a pathway to survival. The Pathway to Survival website has some interesting info and webinars available. It has been set up by a group of people from within Extinction Rebellion (XR) groups in Aotearoa who want the government to take urgent decisive action on the intersecting crises of ecosystem collapse, climate and social injustice and colonisation. 10) Hospital Retires Coal Boilers for Health. DETA Consulting were recently commissioned to assess the best option for converting the Timaru Hospital from burning coal for their process heat requirements to a low emissions alternative. Below are are some extracts from their report on the DETA Consulting website about this project. This is a good example of how a mix of technologies can be used to replace coal burning for process heat. Even before the New Zealand Government mandated carbon neutrality (under the Carbon Neutral Government Programme) – the Facilities team at Timaru Hospital were committed to replacing the 1970’s vintage coal boilers with a low carbon alternative. All the hospital’s process heat requirements were supplied by the boilers, needing more than 2,000 tonnes of coal per year, leading to carbon emissions of more than 4,500 tCO2-e. Starting with an Options Study, DETA quickly identified that:
11) Why are we still burning coal? NZ Geographic recently published a comprehensive article providing an excellent analysis for those interested in this topic. It looks at the issues driving continued coal use and hindering conversion to alternative fuel sources for large industrial coal users. They say - The crux of the issue is that “Anything that relies on power from the current New Zealand electricity market is going to be substantially more expensive than coal”. According to Fonterra, which burns coal at nine of its 29 dairy plants, the fossil fuel is 3.25 times cheaper than electricity as a source of process heat. The dairy giant says converting to electricity at scale would cripple its bottom line. A 2021 report for the Ministry for the Environment investigated four coal-intensive industries and found that all beneficiary companies were receiving more free carbon units than their actual climate liability—some by three times as much. In 2020, New Zealand Steel was handed 2,030,166 free New Zealand Units (NZUs) worth $30 million more than it actually needed to cover its emissions. New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Limited (Rio Tinto) got 1,558,268 NZUs, yet emitted just 637,000 tonnes in the year to June 2021—effectively a subsidy of almost $60 million. Turners & Growers Fresh Limited received more than 19,000 NZUs to grow tomatoes. When you recall that a tonne of coal releases twice that amount of CO2-e, what at first seems merely a loophole quickly reveals itself to be a gushing rupture. Critics say that industrial allocations are practically a subsidy to wreck the climate—and the government isn’t denying it. In July 2021, it released a discussion document seeking views on how to put a stop to this ill-conceived largesse. Check out the full article for more information. 12) Carbon Sequestration by Native Forest - Setting the Record Straight. Well-managed planted indigenous forest is better at sequestering carbon and faster growing than commonly considered. The Pure Advantage group have published research on this topic. This research is a first for planted native forest using methodology comparable to that used for planted radiata pine forest in New Zealand, and is now presented in an informative free e-book which can be viewed free online. 13) How not to solve the climate change problem. This article from "The Conversation" written by Kevin Trenberth at Auckland University is a straightforward and easy to understand analysis of the problem and the major constraints associated with some proposed solutions. When politicians talk about reaching “net zero” emissions, they’re often counting on trees or technology that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air. What they don’t mention is just how much these proposals or geoengineering would cost to allow the world to continue burning fossil fuels. There are many proposals for removing carbon dioxide, but most make differences only at the edges, and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have continued to increase relentlessly, even through the pandemic. 14) Wishing for fairy dust – why the NZ Biofuels Obligation is the worst kind of magical thinking. Below is an extract from an excellent analysis, produced by Jake Roos and published on the Low Carbon Kapiti website, of the unintended negative consequences of introducing a biofuels mandate in NZ. He says - Wouldn’t it be great if wishes came true, and all your problems just went away? If all you needed to do is ask for something and it materialised out of thin air before you? Of course it would, but the world doesn’t work like that. But it seems the NZ Government is in the thrall of such magical thinking when it comes to ‘sustainable’ biofuels. To summarise:
GLOBAL 15) Young people go to European court to stop treaty that aids fossil fuel investors. Five people, aged between 17 and 31, who have experienced devastating floods, forest fires and hurricanes are bringing a case to the European court of human rights, where they will argue that their governments’ membership of the little-known energy charter treaty (ECT) is a dangerous obstacle to action on the climate crisis. It is the first time that the Strasbourg court will be asked to consider the treaty, a secretive investor court system that enables fossil fuel companies to sue governments for lost profits. Check out the full article here. 16) The world's first operational 'sand battery' can store energy for months. The Interesting Engineering website had an article last month about research looking at the viability of using a sand battery to store energy as heat. In their report they say - "A team of researchers from Finland has set up the world's first commercial-scale 'sand battery' that can be used to store power generated from renewable sources for months at a time to solve the problem of year-round supply, BBC reported. The push for renewable power has meant that researchers are looking for new ways to store energy over the long term. While batteries made using lithium and other earth minerals can be purposed to work as energy farms, the solution becomes unsustainable if the whole world shift to renewables. Recently, we reported how Switzerland spent 14 years repurposing its natural reservoirs as giant water batteries. While this uses the centuries-old concept to tap into the potential energy of water stored at a higher level, the construction of such facilities can cost millions of dollars. The Finnish solution could be a much cheaper alternative." 17) The exponential rise of CO2 in our planet's atmosphere. In 1949, it took 20 years for atmospheric Co2 to rise by 20 ppm, in midlife 1980, it took 15 years to rise 20 ppm, now, it has taken 10 years to rise 20 ppm.........  18) We cannot adapt our way out of climate crisis, warns leading scientist. I have a lot of respect for climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and was encouraged to see this Guardian article highlighting the importance of keeping our focus on emissions reduction, and that this must be our priority if we wish to maintain a liveable planet Earth. What she says is hard hitting and confronting but I believe has to be said. Here is an extract from the article - The world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis, and counting on adaptation to limit damage is no substitute for urgently cutting greenhouse gases, a leading climate scientist has warned. Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy in the US and professor at Texas Tech University, said the world was heading for dangers unseen in the 10,000 years of human civilisation, and efforts to make the world more resilient were needed but by themselves could not soften the impact enough. “People do not understand the magnitude of what is going on,” she said. “This will be greater than anything we have ever seen in the past. This will be unprecedented. Every living thing will be affected.” Hayhoe said the IPCC findings had not been broadly understood by many people. “This is an unprecedented experiment with the climate,” she said. “The reality is that we will not have anything left that we value, if we do not address the climate crisis.” 19) Have you heard of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Ipbes)? As readers of this newsletter will be aware CKM members are just as concerned about threats to biodiversity as they are about global warming. The existential crisis facing life on our planet is multi-faceted and cannot be addressed in a piecemeal fashion. To quote from the Dasgupta Review from two years ago - “Nature’s value must be at the heart of economics”. The major report recently released by Ipbes is equally as important as the IPCC reports on Climate Change. The Ipbes report provides compelling evidence that humans are overexploiting wild species and habitats. Harmful activities, including habitat destruction, poor farming practices and pollution, have altered ecosystems significantly, driving many species past the point of recovery. It's amazing that a report by this organisation, which is critical to helping us understand the biodiversity crisis facing Mother Nature, is so little known about. If you're interested check out the full article where you can also access the report. 20) Tipping Point risks for critical climate systems. The Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration in Australia has published a new report written by David Spratt and Ian Dunlop with a foreward by Professor Sir David King FRS. "Climate Dominoes: Tipping point risks for critical climate systems, outlines the scientific evidence that critical climate tipping points face grave risks in Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland Ice Sheet, Amazon rainforest and for coral reefs. It concludes that as a result of climate denial and inaction, the Great Barrier Reef, along with coral reefs worldwide, is in a death spiral even at today’s 1.2oC average global temperature increase." This article outlines the focus of the report. It says - "The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Reports (AR6) are the most important analyses of humanity’s future on Earth to date. As Professor Sir David King FRS says in his foreword to “Climate Dominoes”: “Never before have we had so much scientific evidence demonstrating that we are in the midst of a global climate emergency.” AR6 provides a stark warning that humanity’s chances of outrunning the devastating impacts of climate change are uncomfortably low. The fact that these reports have been ignored by our political leaders is an abrogation of their primary responsibility to ensure the security of the Australian people. Unfortunately there is a blind spot in the AR6 analysis, in that the severity of human impact on our planetary ecosystems is leading us toward a range of irreversible tipping points. These are the greatest risks of climate change, for the process does not necessarily progress in a linear manner correlated with increasing atmospheric carbon concentrations. Instead, at certain points, it may “tip” abruptly from one relatively stable state to another far less conducive to human prosperity or survival. The “Climate Dominoes” report has reviewed the latest science and concludes that tipping point risks are greater than previously thought:
21) The ultra-polluting Scarborough-Pluto gas project in West Australia. An article written by Bill Hare of Murdoch University in West Australia claims this one project alone could blow through the new Australian Labor government's climate target – and it just got the green light."The Albanese government has this week thrown its support behind what’ll be one of Australia’s most polluting developments: the Scarborough-Pluto gas project in Western Australia. Our analysis last year found the full Scarborough-Pluto project will emit almost 1.4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. That’s over three times Australia’s current annual emissions, and around 14 times WA’s annual emissions. We calculate that the emissions from this project and all of its related activities will add about 41 megatonnes per year to Australia’s national emissions by 2030. That is a materially relevant number – it’s nearly 7% of our emissions in 2005, which is the year we use as a baseline for emissions targets. To put it another way, it’s nearly twice as much as the emissions avoided by all the rooftop solar panels in Australia each year." 22) Former Australian chief scientist to head review of carbon credit scheme after whistleblower revelations. The former Australian chief scientist and senior academic, Prof Ian Chubb, has been appointed to head a thorough review of Australia’s carbon credit scheme as experts escalate calls for a complete overhaul of the system. Chris Bowen, the climate change minister, announced on Friday that Chubb, a neuroscientist and former vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, would lead the six-month review of the scheme, after a respected whistleblower described it as a fraud and waste of taxpayer money. Carbon credits are bought by governments and businesses as an alternative to cutting carbon dioxide emissions. While their use to help meet emissions targets has significant support – particularly among polluting companies promising to offset their impact on the planet – critics have raised concern about whether credits issued in Australia represent real emissions cuts beyond what would have happened anyway. This article outlines major deficiencies in the Australian carbon credit scheme. Why are we not surprised? 23) A huge Atlantic ocean current is slowing down. If it collapses, La Niña could become the norm for our part of the world. This article from the Conversation highlights the latest research looking at the slowing down of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation and the likely impacts for Australia. NZ will of course be similarly impacted and Marlborough just experiencing it's wettest month on record is an example of what they are predicting. "Climate change is slowing down the conveyor belt of ocean currents that brings warm water from the tropics up to the North Atlantic. Our research, published today in Nature Climate Change, looks at the profound consequences to global climate if this Atlantic conveyor collapses entirely. We found the collapse of this system – called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation – would shift the Earth’s climate to a more La Niña-like state. This would mean more flooding rains over eastern Australia and worse droughts and bushfire seasons over southwest United States. East-coast Australians know what unrelenting La Niña feels like. Climate change has loaded our atmosphere with moister air, while two summers of La Niña warmed the ocean north of Australia. Both contributed to some of the wettest conditions ever experienced, with record-breaking floods in New South Wales and Queensland. Meanwhile, over the southwest of North America, a record drought and severe bushfires have put a huge strain on emergency services and agriculture, with the 2021 fires alone estimated to have cost at least US$70 billion. The oceans are the flywheel of Earth’s climate, slowing the pace of change by absorbing heat and carbon in vast quantities. But there is payback, with sea level rise, ice melt, and a significant slowdown of the Atlantic overturning circulation projected for this century. Now we know this slowdown will not just affect the North Atlantic region, but as far away as Australia and Antarctica. We can prevent these changes from happening by growing a new low-carbon economy. Doing so will change, for the second time in less than a century, the course of Earth’s climate history – this time for the better." 24) State of the Global Climate 2021 Report. The recent release of the World Meteorological Organisation's State of the Global Climate 2021 report is available. The summary below is an extract from an article on the Australian website "Pearls and Irritations". Every year the World Meteorological Organization issues ‘State of the Global Climate’, an authoritative report covering the latest global climate indicators, the year’s high impact events (heatwaves, floods, droughts and the like) and assessments of risks and impacts (e.g. food security, population displacement, effects on ecosystems). The 2021 edition confirms current problems and future risks:
The WMO has produced an excellent interactive online ‘storymap’ that summarises the results, and contains lots of pictures, graphs, 1-2 minute explanatory videos of various phenomena and quiz questions. This is a valuable resource for anyone needing access to an up to date and thorough summary of the state of the global climate. 25) Methane much more sensitive to global heating than previously thought. I found a recent study discussed in this article very interesting. It highlights an undesirable impact on global methane levels arising from increased wildfires worldwide. A link is available in the article to download the full study. About 40% of methane emissions come from natural sources such as wetlands, while 60% come from anthropogenic sources such as cattle farming, fossil fuel extraction and landfill sites. Possible explanations for the rise in methane emissions range from expanding exploration of oil and natural gas, rising emissions from agriculture and landfill, and rising natural emissions as tropical wetlands warm and Arctic tundra melts. The predominant way in which methane is “mopped up” is via reaction with hydroxyl radicals (OH) in the atmosphere. “The hydroxyl radical has been termed the ‘detergent’ of the atmosphere because it works to cleanse the atmosphere of harmful trace gases,” said Redfern. But hydroxyl radicals also react with carbon monoxide, and an increase in wildfires may have pumped more carbon monoxide into the atmosphere and altered the chemical balance. “On average, a carbon monoxide molecule remains in the atmosphere for about three months before it’s attacked by a hydroxyl radical, while methane persists for about a decade. So wildfires have a swift impact on using up the hydroxyl ‘detergent’ and reduce the methane removal,” said Redfern. 26) A Case Study of Fossil-Fuel Depletion. This is a long but very relevant case study by Blair Fix, a political economist, using the Alberta, Canada oil and gas industry as the study area. Here are some extracts - If you had to choose one word that describes human history since the industrial revolution, what would it be? I’d vote for ‘exponential’. Over the last two centuries, so many things have grown exponentially that it’s hard to keep track. Less discussed is the corollary of exponential growth, which is exponential depletion. The two dynamics go hand in hand. When one thing grows exponentially, another thing must deplete exponentially. This fact follows from simple conservation laws. If you want your stock of A to grow, you must deplete your stock of B. There is no alternative. Since the industrial revolution began, humans have been expanding our stock of technology by depleting the Earth’s stock of fossil fuels (among other resources). Energy return on investment is not the only way to measure the easy-to-getness of a resource. Another option is to look at the size of the reserve being exploited. Let’s use water to illustrate the principle. Consider the difference between the following scenarios:
The same principle applies to the extraction of oil and gas. The low-hanging fruit consists of the enormous reserves that can be tapped with a single well. The hard-to-get fruit(s) are the tiny reserves that are numerous yet diffuse. According to the low-hanging fruit principle, we ought to tap the biggest reserves first. Nga mihi nui, Budyong.
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Kia ora Hope you are all well out there. Here is another selection of items for your perusal. Treat it like a smorgasbord and just take what interests you. LOCAL 1) MDC Emissions Inventory Report released - Marlborough District Council has released its first reports detailing the carbon footprint from its operations, finding just over 75 per cent of measurable emissions come from its landfill. The reports, for the years ending 2019 and 2020, were prepared by independent consultants CarbonEES to serve as a baseline that the Council can benchmark against for future years. An initial benchmark was the first task in the Climate Change Action Plan, which was approved in March 2020, just as Covid-19 began to surface. After the 2020 report had been prepared, Council undertook a second report for 2019 in order to understand its pre-Covid emissions. The Report states - The objectives of this carbon foot-printing project are to:
Scope 2 are indirect emissions associated with the generation of electricity purchased by MDC. Scope 3 are other indirect emissions that are a consequence of MDC's activities but from sources they do not own or directly control. (construction/infrastructure projects, bus services, etc) The first point to note is that the report only includes emissions from council owned AND operated sources. The organisational boundary follows an operational control approach. As such, the emissions inventory includes all sources associated with activities Marlborough District Council had operational control (authority to introduce and implement operating policies) over... (which excludes Port Marlborough, Marlborough Airport, Marlborough Regional Forestry, Marlborough Sustainable Housing Trust and Marlborough Stadium Trust.) The Report writers also recommended to Council "that council work with the airport, the port, and any other entities which the council owns but does not operate to calculate these emissions. If these emissions were known to council they could be included as a Scope 3 emissions source under category 15, Investments." In conclusion they recommend:
The Council also released a useful media statement for those who haven’t seen it. 2) Marlborough Landfill Gas Utilisation – The Contract for the beneficial use of landfill gas has been awarded to LMS Energy Limited. The first phase of the Contract is for LMS to carry out an investigation of the existing landfill gas collection and destruction system. LMS will then provide staff with a report on the efficiency of the current system and where any improvements in landfill gas capture could be made. Improvements could include extending the gas capture system by constructing additional gas boreholes. Any improvements will be tied to existing budgets. Thereafter, the gas field will then be monitored over a minimum 6-month period to ensure the quality and quantity of the gas is consistent. Stage 2 of the assessment would then see the design of a suitable biogas plant that would utilise the available landfill gas as a fuel to drive a turbine for electricity production. FYI - LMS Energy is Australia’s largest and most experienced landfill biogas company. The recovery of landfill biogas reduces carbon emissions and provides a reliable source of renewable energy. Each year, LMS’ projects reduce over 4 million tonnes of carbon from being emitted into the atmosphere, making LMS Australia’s largest emissions reducer. LMS has successfully delivered more landfill biogas projects than any other Australian company and are highly recognised as innovators in this industry. 3) Repurposing of Unwanted Goods Project - Here is an opportunity to redirect unwanted goods from going to landfill, by finding new homes for them. This helps to maximise the benefit to our community from the production of those goods. Reuse of goods is one of the most efficient things we can all do to reduce our carbon footprint. The Collection and Repurposing of Unwanted Goods Project is funded through existing budgets and a grant from the waste minimisation fund. The project began in March 2021 and is scheduled for completion by 30 June 2022. The project reporting is split across two milestones. Milestone 1 has now been completed and the relevant reporting information submitted to the waste minimisation funds team at the Ministry for the Environment. The objectives of milestone 1 were: 1. Establish a system for the collection and redistribution of unwanted reusable items by project completion. 2. Establish a redistribution system for unwanted goods based on the following criteria a) No transport and b) Self-identified immediate need. 3. Report on incidences of general illegal dumping across the project period compared to the 12-month period prior to the project. More info on the project and associated booking system can be found here: NATIONAL 4) What would a National government do on climate change? For anyone who missed seeing Tom Powell's article recently it is worth having a look at it and reading the detailed response from Scott Simpson, the National Party Climate Change spokesperson, that was published in the article. In writing the article we appreciated the input and feedback we received from CKM member Toby Stevenson and Tim Jones from Coal Action Network. Max Rashbrooke also wrote a good article focusing on the weaknesses of the NZ ETS, and showing support of the concerns expressed in Tom's opinion piece. 5) Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) release - Aotearoa New Zealand's first emissions reduction plan was recently released, titled "Te hau mārohi ki anamata - Towards a productive, sustainable and inclusive economy." The plan states that it "contains strategies, policies and actions for achieving our first emissions budget and contributing to global efforts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels." The Ministry of Environment website has a summary of the plan and you can also download the full document there if you wish. If like me you struggle to get your head around the question of whether this Plan is going to really bring about the deep seated changes we require to help keep our planet liveable then here are a few options for gauging responses from people better informed than me. This Scoop article canvasses opinions from 13 different scientists focusing on areas such as Transport, Agriculture, Energy, Waste and Building & Construction and provides an opportunity to build some understanding of the Plan. There are also some very useful contributions taking an Overview of the Plan. There are positive statements recognising the progress that has been made but from my reading I get the feeling that politics (an election next year) have again got in the way of making the big and critical changes required. Here are a couple of quotes - "Well, the emission reduction plan is yet another step forward in meeting targets, but I don’t detect any urgency." and "While its objectives focus on the socio-cultural well-being of New Zealanders, the actions presented in this plan are mostly technocratic. Technology will not save us from climate change, as climate change is a political problem more than a technical one. This report considers no limits to growth and no attempts for de-growth, only an attempt to have a “de-carbonized growth” through technology and policy." I've also read other comments elsewhere such as "the ERP was even less ambitious and showed less urgency than the discussion document." One significant development in the ERP is the changed focus to 50% renewable energy across the energy sector, away from the government's previously stated 100% renewable electricity target, though the question this raises is - How serious are the supporting actions to deliver the new target? The ERP refers to the issues of energy security and cost concerns and this has prompted caution over phasing out natural gas. The plan states - “Phasing out fossil gas presents short-term and long-term challenges, including balancing capital investment with declining fossil gas use, fossil gas affordability and the risk of stranded network assets. The government is working to address these challenges and set out a pathway for the fossil gas sector.” This quote from an article on the pay walled Business Desk website states - "This will be done through a gas transition plan that will feed into a wider energy strategy that will focus on increasing renewables across the entire sector and not just electricity generation. This will include work led by the GIC (The Gas Industry Company (GIC) regulates the sector), to consider whether any mechanisms are needed to ensure fossil gas is available to industrial users in times of unexpectedly tight supply”. Some believe the signalling around the loosening of the 100% renewable electricity target and the gas transition plan will be interpreted by the energy sector as a win and a reason to believe that gas will continue to have a role. The Climate Change Commission advised the government to set a date from when no new gas connections should be allowed but their concerns about energy security and affordability are among the reasons the government has gone against the advice on the phasing out of gas. This Stuff article looks at the Government's aim to boost the renewable energy target across the whole energy sector from the current 28% share to 50% by 2035 and addresses the question of gas transition. It states - "The head of the independent Climate Change Commission is urging caution by anyone planning to connect a home to the natural (fossil-fueled) gas network, despite the Government balking at setting an end date for new gas hook-ups." So the ERP is explicit about a gas transition plan but there appears to be silence on coal for electricity generation. Coal is mentioned frequently in respect of coal boilers but there is nothing in the Plan that restrains the use of coal for generation. Some parts of the (ERP) stand out as good moves for the transport sector. In particular, it sets this target: “Reduce total kilometres travelled [VKT] by the light fleet by 20 per cent by 2035 through improved urban form and providing better travel options, particularly in our largest cities.” This target plus the higher standard of justification required for new roading could lead to substantial emissions reduction in urban transport. The Greater Auckland website has a guest post by sustainable transport and accessibility advocate Tim Adriaansen that I found to be a useful summary on the ERP. 6) The NZ SeaRise Project - Te Tai Pari O Aotearoa programme has released location specific sea level rise projections out to the year 2300 for every 2 km of the coast of Aotearoa New Zealand. These projections can be accessed through a new online tool developed by Takiwā, a data management and analytics platform. For the first time, New Zealanders will be able to see how much and how fast sea level will rise along ‘their own’ stretch of coast and in their neighbourhood. The tool allows users to click on a particular location on the coast and see how much sea level is expected to rise, and by when, under different climate change scenarios. Climate change and warming temperatures are causing sea level to rise, on average, by 3.5 mm per year. This sea level rise is caused by thermal expansion of the ocean, by melting glaciers, and by melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. However, local sea level rise around the coast of Aotearoa is also affected by up and down movements of our land. We are very aware when these vertical land movements occur in large jumps during earthquakes, but less obvious to us are the smaller shifts that occur continuously in between large seismic events. These small but continuous changes add up, and in areas that are going down (subsiding) the annual rate of sea level rise can double. We have connected this vertical land movement data with climate driven sea level rise to provide locally-relevant sea level projections. 7) Draft national adaptation plan - We’re consulting on a draft national plan to help Aotearoa New Zealand adapt to and minimise the harmful impacts of climate change. New Zealand’s first national adaptation plan will build the foundation for adaptation action so that all sectors and communities are able to live and thrive in a changing climate. The consultation also outlines proposals for flood insurance and managed retreat policies. Consultation will close at 11:59pm on 3 June 2022. To learn more check out the full consultation document. 8) New Zealand’s Process Heat Fuel Future. Part 1: South Island - In 2020 DETA Consulting published the whitepaper, Carbon Roadmap to 2050. In the foreword of this new report, NZ's Process Heat Fuel Future, they say they want to bring - "...the conversation around specifically to industrial process heat. It is time to look forward and think of the big picture - how feasible is it to use alternatives such as wood (biomass) and electricity, and what are some of the long-term implications in making the switch?" The report helps industries to understand what biomass levels could be available when they transition away from coal. They go on to say in the Executive Summary - "Coal remains a low-cost option for process heat users. However, it is also a very significant contributor to climate change. As Aotearoa New Zealand moves towards a low carbon future, organisations that rely heavily on coal and other fossil fuels for process heat need to adapt or be left behind – a rising Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will make coal substantially more expensive than it is today, and the New Zealand Government has implemented a ban on all new low to medium temperature coal boilers as of March 2022, with plans to phase out existing coal boilers by 2037. Across the South Island, there is 1.46 GW of non- renewable heat capacity, or 24.3 Petajoule (PJ) of annual heat production from fossil fuels, primarily from coal. In other words, the equivalent of 65% of electricity consumed annually by the South Island, is being produced from non-renewable fossil fuels. Industries know they need to move away from fossil fuels and are primarily considering biomass and electric alternatives." Here are a couple of examples from the report that highlights some of the challenges that will need to be dealt with as fossil fuel fired boilers (primarily coal) for industrial process heat are phased out by 2037 as required by government regulation - "Canterbury’s wood fibre availability is severely diminished due to massive forest clearing efforts in the late 1990s to early 2000s. By 2031 the Canterbury region will need 7.6 PJ or 55% of its heat energy from electric boilers or other non- biomass technologies. That’s equivalent to 35% of Canterbury’s current yearly electricity consumption." AND "‘We found that fossil fuel boilers produce about 24.3 PJ of heat. That’s equivalent to 65% of the electricity consumption of the entire South Island’. However, fossil fuel boilers typically operate around 75-85% efficiency, so to produce 24.3 PJ of heat requires approximately 31.5 PJ of fuel energy." 9) Save BOARD - Low Carbon Building Materials made from Upcycled packaging - Here's a new development for NZ. I hope they succeed and grow. Made in New Zealand; healthy, affordable, high performance, low carbon building materials that make a circular economy an everyday reality. We take everyday packaging waste and upcycle it into high performing building materials - durable, inherently moisture and mould resistant. Our board products are also 100% recyclable as all recovered offcuts and end of life products can be remanufactured into new boards providing a circular solution.
10) Making climate a boardroom priority. Chapter Zero New Zealand is part of a global network of board directors committed to taking action on climate change. It is hosted in Aotearoa by the Institute of Directors. Here is a brief summary from their website - Climate change is shaping a new reality, creating risks and opportunities for business in a diverse number of ways. Investors, regulators and other stakeholders are now challenging companies to take responsibility by adopting an integrated, strategic approach to addressing the climate emergency. The urgent need to address the climate emergency requires governments and business to accelerate the transition to a new economic model, which seeks to limit global average temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, consistent with the 2018 recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). To fulfil their fiduciary duties in the long-term service of their organisations, directors need to be fully aware of the implications of climate change, have the skills, tools, processes and information to act, and commit to steward their companies through the challenges climate change entails to embed it within their companies’ strategic planning. 11) Many of New Zealand’s glaciers could disappear in a decade, scientists warn. New Zealand’s glaciers are becoming “smaller and more skeletal” due to the effects of climate change and scientists predict many could disappear within a decade. An annual end-of-summer survey that records the snowline of more than 50 South Island glaciers has revealed continued loss of snow and ice. Every year, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), the Victoria University of Wellington and the conservation department gather thousands of aerial photographs of the glaciers to measure the altitude of the snowline and see how much of the previous winter’s snow has remained covering each glacier. That snowline, also known as the equilibrium line altitude (ELA), allows scientists to evaluate the glacier’s health. If the glacier size has decreased, then the line will be higher, because less winter snow remains. “We were expecting the snowlines to be high because of the warm weather we’ve had and sadly, our instincts were confirmed,” said Dr Andrew Lorrey, a principal scientist at Niwa. New Zealand’s glaciers had lost mass most years over the past decade, said Dr Lauren Vargo from Victoria University. “But what was more striking to me is how much smaller and more skeletal so many of the glaciers are becoming.” Check out the full article. INTERNATIONAL 12) Iceland: cross-party demand for ecocide law goes to parliament - It is encouraging to see progress being made in another country towards getting Ecocide law legislated. It would be great if NZ got on board with this initiative. “Auður Önnu Magnúsdóttir, general manager of the Icelandic Environment Association, a Member of Parliament for the Pirate Party, announced that: “It's time for us to hold people accountable if nature is harmed in such a way that it threatens world peace, security and well-being. That is why I was submitting a parliamentary resolution proposing that ecocide be recognized as an international crime. It is especially good to see broad support for the issue - we are 12 MPs from four parties who are responsible for it - and hopefully Iceland can take a leading position in this fight for the rights of Mother Earth, which is in full swing all over the world." Check out the full text of the press release. 13) Revealed: the ‘carbon bombs’ set to trigger catastrophic climate breakdown - This Guardian article highlights details of major oil and gas projects currently planned by the major fossil fuel companies. The world’s biggest fossil fuel firms are quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global impacts, a Guardian investigation shows. The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital. The lure of colossal payouts in the years to come appears to be irresistible to the oil companies, despite the world’s climate scientists stating in February that further delay in cutting fossil fuel use would mean missing our last chance “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. As the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned world leaders in April: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us.” Details of the projects being planned are not easily accessible but an investigation published in the Guardian shows: The fossil fuel industry’s short-term expansion plans involve the start of oil and gas projects that will produce greenhouse gases equivalent to a decade of CO2 emissions from China, the world’s biggest polluter. These plans include 195 carbon bombs, gigantic oil and gas projects that would each result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes, in total equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. About 60% of these have already started pumping. The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m a day for the rest of the decade exploiting new fields of oil and gas that cannot be burned if global heating is to be limited to well under 2C. The Middle East and Russia often attract the most attention in relation to future oil and gas production but the US, Canada and Australia are among the countries with the biggest expansion plans and the highest number of carbon bombs. The US, Canada and Australia also give some of the world’s biggest subsidies for fossil fuels per capita. In a similar vein this article highlights a study that proposes the shut down of fossil fuel production sites early to avoid climate chaos. It says - "Nearly half of existing fossil fuel production sites need to be shut down early if global heating is to be limited to 1.5C, the internationally agreed goal for avoiding climate catastrophe, according to a new scientific study. The assessment goes beyond the call by the International Energy Agency in 2021 to stop all new fossil fuel development to avoid the worst impacts of global heating, a statement seen as radical at the time. The new research reaches its starker conclusion by not assuming that new technologies will be able to suck huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to compensate for the burning of coal, oil and gas. Experts said relying on such technologies was a risky gamble." 14) A couple of developments in the field of Hydrogen - A new method for rapid, efficient hydrogen generation from water. Aluminum is a highly reactive metal that can strip oxygen from water molecules to generate hydrogen gas. Now, researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a new cost-effective and effective way to use aluminum’s reactivity to generate clean hydrogen fuel. In a new study, a team of researchers shows that an easily produced composite of gallium and aluminum creates aluminum nanoparticles that react rapidly with water at room temperature to yield large amounts of hydrogen. According to researchers, the gallium was easily recovered for reuse after the reaction, which yields 90% of the hydrogen that could theoretically be produced from the reaction of all the aluminum in the composite. While gallium is not abundant and is relatively expensive, it can be recovered and reused multiple times without losing effectiveness. However, it remains to be seen if this process can be scaled up to be practical for commercial hydrogen production. Natural hydrogen exploration ‘boom’ snaps up one third of South Australia. 15) Compressed Air Technology. Here is another interesting way of utilising renewable electricity for transport and as a way to store energy. A NZ company called Air Future is promoting this technology here. COMPRESSED AIR TECHNOLOGY is one of the best possible solutions because its carbon footprint is optimal, its reservoir is chemically inert and its very reasonable cost makes it possible to optimise energy production resulting from sustainable development. With the vision to make ecology accessable to all, Motor Development International (MDI) has developed a disruptive clean high technology of engines running on compressed air, which caters for a wide variety of applications operable to Sustain Mobility and Energy Storage Solutions. The MDI high-tech engines using only compressed air are totally clean. Global energy challenges dictate the choice of new production paradigms and energy storage means. To accumulate and store energy from a primary source and then use it with a very high conversion efficiency is the challenge that the MDI concept of compressed air engines meets and achieves. The MDI reversible high-tech engines compress ambient air in approved tanks of various capacities at a pressure of 248 bars. The expansion of this stored energy in the form of movement allows you to replace all heat engines and cover any type of application: to move vehicles or to store and re-use electric energy. 16) Solar energy can now be stored for up to 18 years, say scientists - Solar-powered electronics are one step closer to becoming an everyday part of our lives thanks to a “radical” new scientific breakthrough. In 2017, scientists at a Swedish university created an energy system that makes it possible to capture and store solar energy for up to 18 years, releasing it as heat when needed. Now the researchers have succeeded in getting the system to produce electricity by connecting it to a thermoelectric generator. Though still in its early stages, the concept developed at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenberg could pave the way for self-charging electronics that use stored solar energy on demand. “This is a radically new way of generating electricity from solar energy. It means that we can use solar energy to produce electricity regardless of weather, time of day, season, or geographical location,” explains research leader Kasper Moth-Poulsen, Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers. Check out the full article. 17) Corn-Based Ethanol May Be Worse For the Climate Than Gasoline, a New Study Finds. Ethanol made from corn grown across millions of acres of American farmland has become the country’s premier renewable fuel, touted as a low-carbon alternative to traditional gasoline and a key component of the country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But a new study, published this week, finds that corn-based ethanol may actually be worse for the climate than fossil-based gasoline, and has other environmental downsides. “We thought and hoped it would be a climate solution and reduce and replace our reliance on gasoline,” said Tyler Lark, a researcher with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and lead author of the study. “It turns out to be no better for the climate than the gasoline it aims to replace and comes with all kinds of other impacts.” Check out the full article for more info. 18) Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: Developing a PLAN for the future. This scientific research paper asks some serious questions and is refreshing in that it does not dodge the difficult issues. This age of modernity is characterized by consistent growth in energy use, economic activity, and resource consumption, and a generally increasing standard of living—albeit inequitably distributed. All currently living humans, and most academic disciplines, have developed in this age, which appears normal and indefinite to us. But modernity has been enabled by the rapid and accelerating expenditure of our one-time inheritance of fossil fuels, and by drawing down the resources and ecosystems of our finite Earth—none of which can be sustained as we transition from a resource-rich frontier to a human-dominated planet. Climate change is often singled out as modernity’s existential crisis, but it is only one of a series of interlocking challenges constituting an unprecedented predicament that must be understood and mitigated in order to live within planetary limits. While energetic and technological challenges attract significant attention, arguably the greatest challenges are conceptual or even cultural. In particular, as we review in this Perspective, today’s political economy has been designed to value short-term financial wealth over the real treasure of Earth’s functioning ecosystems, to discount the future at the expense of the present, and to demand infinite exponential growth…which is simply impossible on a finite planet. Given all this, humanity should view its present overshoot-prone trajectory with tremendous suspicion, humility, and concern. We call for the establishment of a transdisciplinary network of scholars from across the entire academic landscape to develop a global understanding of planetary limits and how humanity can adapt to the associated realities. We present a set of foundational principles to serve as a starting point to anchor this network and drive a new area of focused inquiry to develop a shared vision of viable future paths. What would a lower-fossil-energy future look like? Can an energy regime transformation take place as broadly and quickly as needed to offset declining net energy? Is it as unlikely as preliminary studies suggest that renewable energy technology/innovation might save the modern human project from the challenges of a resource-constrained future? Will the future look more like the distant past than the present? When does the downward portion of the fossil fuel age begin? What can be done to minimize the chances of colossal failure or sub-systemic breakdown, which in the worst case could threaten preservation of science and human knowledge? Certainly, failure to acknowledge dire possibilities invites huge risk. Much is at stake, and humanity must be very cautious about the temptation for denial, dismissal, or idolatrous hope for some technological breakthrough—especially in light of credible causes for concern. 19) The future of food and energy with Mike Joy. The quote below on the opening screen of the webinar, gives a feel for the focus of the talk. The talk was organised by Nelson Tasman Climate Forum. Mike provided some very useful topical information in his talk. "Rather than trying to comfort politicians in their utopias, scientists should instead help them to get out of the denial of reality." Gerhard Bonhomme, Professor Emeritus, University Lorraine. Chairman Energy/Environment Commission of the French Physical Society. 20) In-depth Q&A: The IPCC’s sixth assessment on how climate change impacts the world. The Carbon Brief website have posted a very good overview of the IPCC’s AR6 Sixth Assessment report that was released in August last year. Most readers of this newsletter will be aware of the AR6 report and also possibly aware of how daunting it is at more than 3000 pages long. For anybody wanting to understand a bit more than just the headlines that we get in the media this in-depth Q&A is a very good resource. 21) NFT scams, toxic ‘mines’ and lost life savings: the cryptocurrency dream is fading fast - Cryptocurrencies, according to their most ardent supporters, are supposed to supplant nations’ existing currencies and end central banks’ control over the money supply. Instead, individuals will be able to trade with each other in a decentralised, digital financial ecosystem. This is a good thing, they promise, because unlike states and their central banks, technology is incorruptible. Crypto-evangelists imagine technology as a replacement for social and political institutions.But technology never replaces social and political behaviour; it merely alters the rules and norms we follow. To see this in action, one need only look at the plummeting value of Terra Luna, a crypto token that crashed by 98% in a day, causing some investors to lose their life savings; the plunging value of Bitcoin and Ethereum; or the countless scam victims whose non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been stolen. Check out the full article. 22) PV Magazine - This website has a wide range of interesting items on developments in photovoltaics, battery storage, hydrogen technology, etc 23) Algae-Powered Computing -Scientists used a widespread species of blue-green algae to power a microprocessor continuously for a year — and counting — using nothing but ambient light and water. Their system has the potential as a reliable and renewable way to power small electronic devices. The system, comparable in size to an AA battery, contains a type of non-toxic algae called Synechocystis that harvests energy naturally from the sun through photosynthesis. The tiny electrical current this generates then interacts with an aluminum electrode and is used to power a microprocessor. “Our photosynthetic device doesn’t run down the way a battery does because it’s continually using light as the energy source.” The system is made of ordinary, inexpensive, and mostly recyclable materials. This means it could easily be replicated hundreds of thousands of times to power large numbers of small devices as part of the Internet of Things. The researchers say it is likely to be most useful in off-grid situations or remote locations, where small amounts of electrical power can be very beneficial. The researchers say that powering trillions of Internet of Things devices using lithium-ion batteries would be impractical: it would need three times more lithium than is produced across the world annually. And traditional photovoltaic devices are made using hazardous materials that have adverse environmental effects. Check out the full article. 24) The secret world beneath our feet is mind-blowing – and the key to our planet’s future - I would like to finish this time with two articles by George Monbiot focusing on food and soil. As you are no doubt aware by now I'm very interested in keeping a focus on the big picture issues impacting the future our amazing planet and it's ability to support life. These articles highlight another critical area we need to learn more about. I highly recommend them. Don’t dismiss soil: its unknowable wonders could ensure the survival of our species. Beneath our feet is an ecosystem so astonishing that it tests the limits of our imagination. It’s as diverse as a rainforest or a coral reef. We depend on it for 99% of our food, yet we scarcely know it. Soil. But even more arresting than soil’s diversity and abundance is the question of what it actually is. Most people see it as a dull mass of ground-up rock and dead plants. But it turns out to be a biological structure, built by living creatures to secure their survival, like a wasps’ nest or a beaver dam. Microbes make cements out of carbon, with which they stick mineral particles together, creating pores and passages through which water, oxygen and nutrients pass. The tiny clumps they build become the blocks the animals in the soil use to construct bigger labyrinths. While there are international treaties on telecommunication, civil aviation, investment guarantees, intellectual property, psychotropic substances and doping in sport, there is no global treaty on soil. The notion that this complex and scarcely understood system can withstand all we throw at it and continue to support us could be the most dangerous of all our beliefs. While no solution is a panacea, I believe that some of the components of a new global food system – one that is more resilient, more distributed, more diverse and more sustainable – are falling into place. If it happens, it will be built on our new knowledge of the most neglected of major ecosystems: the soil. It could resolve the greatest of all dilemmas: how to feed ourselves without destroying the living systems on which we depend. The future is underground. Check out the full article. The banks collapsed in 2008 – and our food system is about to do the same - "For the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008. A paper in Nature Sustainability reports that in the food system, “shock frequency has increased through time on land and sea at a global scale”. In researching my book Regenesis, I came to realise that it’s this escalating series of contagious shocks, exacerbated by financial speculation, that has been driving global hunger. Now the global food system must survive not only its internal frailties, but also environmental and political disruptions that might interact with each other. To give a current example, in mid-April, the Indian government suggested that it could make up the shortfall in global food exports caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Just a month later, it banned exports of wheat, after crops shrivelled in a devastating heatwave. We urgently need to diversify global food production, both geographically and in terms of crops and farming techniques. We need to break the grip of massive corporations and financial speculators. We need to create backup systems, producing food by entirely different means. We need to introduce spare capacity into a system threatened by its own efficiencies. If so many can go hungry at a time of unprecedented bounty, the consequences of the major crop failure that environmental breakdown could cause defy imagination. The system has to change." Check out the full article. Nga mihi, Budyong.  Kia ora Welcome all to a new year. What will 2022 have in store for us? My feeling is that the one thing we can be certain of is that there will be further unexpected surprises that will continue to challenge our communities, society as a whole and each one of us as individuals. Hope you can find some things of interest to you from the following selection. I've started this newsletter with a range of info looking at the discussion around the pros and cons of using wood biomass and/or electricity for process heat. 1) Talleys receive "Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund" (GIDI) grant - Successful applicants for the second round of the GIDI Fund were announced by Minister for Energy and Resources Dr Megan Woods on September 30 last year. Twenty-three projects will receive government co-investment from Round Two of the $69m GIDI Fund. The recipients will receive $28.7 million and will match this with $54.5m of their own funding. The local Talleys factory received a one million dollar grant. The project will replace three diesel and two coal boilers with a new 6MW wood pellet fired boiler. The steam reticulation system will also be improved with a new steam distribution header that will improve energy efficiency. It is interesting to note they have chosen wood pellets as their new energy source. Research done by Tom and myself last year came to the conclusion that users of process heat who decide to use biomass would be be best placed to install boilers that could burn a range of wet and dry biomass fuels rather than limiting themselves to a single dry product such as wood pellets. In many instances there is also a good case for using electricity directly. Our research resulted in us concluding that New Zealand needs to plan the whole biomass supply and demand process very carefully, otherwise we could easily find ourselves having expectations of biomass that can't be met or result in undesirable consequences. You can read all about it in our article printed by Stuff. 2) Biomass clear favourite for decarbonising SI process heat. Biomass is the clear favourite for industrial process heat users in the South Island looking to decarbonise their operations, according to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. Initial EECA data indicates that 90 per cent of high-temperature boiler operators in Canterbury and Southland prefer biomass to electrification because of cost considerations. Electrode boilers have much higher capital costs than thermal boilers and expose users to changes in wholesale electricity prices. It is much cheaper and easier to convert existing boilers to run on biomass while retaining coal as a backstop. DETA Consulting is leading the primary data collection for EECA’s regional heat demand database project. DETA managing director Jonathan Pooch told an EECA decarbonisation workshop on Friday that this “clear, dominant bias” towards biomass for the southern process heat sector is understandable. Electrification is expensive, and natural gas and geothermal options aren’t available in the South Island. The upshot is dramatically increasing demand for woody-biomass fuels in a part of the country where the bioenergy manufacturing and supply-chain is less developed than in the North Island. “There is a broader conversation that needs to be had, probably as part of a broader energy strategy, about forestry and biomass,” he says. “It’s not an insurmountable challenge, but it is a challenge.” This presents many challenges – particularly when coal remains the cheapest option overall even as prices rise through the Emissions Trading Scheme. “The brutal reality is that the ETS still needs to do some heavy lifting to price coal. It’s going in the right direction – but coal is still the lowest-cost option available.” Pooch estimates large-scale conversion to biomass would require about 13 per cent of the South Island’s annual forest harvest. He thinks there are enough raw materials in the South Island to meet this demand, but the question remains whether the market can tolerate the high prices that diverting those volumes of fibre from existing uses would have. Existing supply is also dominated by waste product and there is comparatively little in the way of higher-energy products like wood pellets. Increased competition for raw materials would require more planting, including short-rotation crops. “We’ve got to see a rapid evolution of this biomass market into something that’s perceived as low risk compared to the baseline of coal and the supply chain that’s been around for 100 years or more.” Check out the full article on the DETA website. 3) NZ replacing coal boilers with wood pellets but some say it slows carbon neutral progress.This article and this interview from RNZ provide some good extra information on this topic and support careful analysis when deciding where the use of wood or electricity is the best option for process heat. Here's an extract from the article - Professor Andrew Blakers from Australian National University said a problem with wood pellets was they depended on the felling of pine trees every 20 to 30 years. A much larger amount of carbon would be soaked up if that same land was instead planted in natives and left alone. "Wood pellets are a very bad way to allegedly reduce your carbon footprint. If the forests are being used for wood pellets, you're better off to convert that area of land to native forests, let it soak up carbon for the next 200 years and get up to 250 tons per hectare of carbon." This was up to five times as much carbon as that soaked up by a pine plantation harvested every two decades, he said. However Massey University's professor emeritus Ralph Sims, who was a regular contributor to the International Panel on Climate Change, said wood pellets did have a role, especially at filling the gap between now and when cheap renewable energy became available. "High temperature heat can be produced by electro thermal technologies, but they tend to be a bit expensive at the moment, but that's an alternative. But if we've got a waste product, like our forest residues lying on the ground as an energy source which is storable, then why not collect it and use it." However Ralph Sims said wood pellets were only a good idea if they were made from wood waste, not, as was happening in North America, whole trees, which were turned in to pellets and exported to Europe. "The worst thing possible is deforestation of any forest whether it's in New Zealand, North Carolina, or the Amazon or Indonesia. We don't want to touch those forests. We want to encourage their survival and enhance their growth if that's possible, as well." 4) Anne Salmond: NZ’s climate planting asking for trouble. New Zealand’s strategy for responding to climate change is fundamentally flawed. Much of the nation’s carbon debt is to be addressed by ‘off-setting’ – planting trees to sequester carbon, either at home or abroad. On one hand, the government proposes to spend billions of dollars on international carbon credits – in other words, paying people in other countries to plant trees to sequester the carbon emitted in New Zealand. On the other hand, the Emissions Trading Scheme has been designed as a ‘market’ for the owners of trees in New Zealand to sell the carbon they sequester to buyers who want to offset the carbon they generate. Since most of the plantations in New Zealand are owned offshore, we’re paying even more to people in other countries to sequester the carbon we’re emitting. The ETS is a spreadsheet designed in a silo, and an ecologist’s nightmare. It privileges the planting of monocultures of exotic conifers in New Zealand, while failing to assess their social, cultural, ecological and economic impacts on local communities and landscapes. Check out the full Newsroom article. 5) The Biomass Industry Expands Across the South, Thanks in Part to UK Subsidies. Critics Say it’s Not ‘Carbon Neutral’. Hundreds of scientists around the world have been arguing that biofuels policies and practices are often far from climate friendly, and that European subsidies propping up the industry are, in fact, dangerous. While the industry generally maintains that it only uses wood waste or low-value trees to make pellets, critics have issued reports with photographs that they say show destructive logging practices and the conversion of entire trees to wood pellets. The argument centers on how quickly new tree growth can absorb the carbon dioxide that’s emitted from power plants that burn wood pellets, given an increasing sense of urgency over the speed with which global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced to avoid the worst effects of global warming. “Burning wood puts more carbon dioxide in the air right now, today, with certainty, than the fossil fuels you were burning,” John Sterman, a professor of management and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Inside Climate News. Bluntly, the scientists including Peter Raven, director emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Society and former President of the American Association for Advancement of Science, wrote: “Trees are more valuable alive than dead both for climate and for biodiversity. To meet future net zero emission goals, your governments should work to preserve and restore forests and not to burn them.” The scientists maintain that subsidies have escalated tree harvesting for energy production at a rate that is creating a “carbon debt” that eventually might be paid back by regrowth—but not nearly fast enough. “Regrowth takes time the world does not have,” the scientists argued in their recent letter. Numerous studies, they pointed out, have shown that “this burning of wood will increase warming for decades to centuries. That is true even when the wood replaces coal, oil or natural gas.” Check out the full article for more detail. 6) Summary of Biofuel vs Biomass. This article gives a good summary of the difference between biofuel and biomass.
7) Te Uru Rākau Publishes the State of Knowledge Report on Transitioning Plantations to Native Forest. The Ministry of Primary Industries commissioned a review of (1) the state of knowledge on the topic of transitioning exotic plantations to native forest and (2) of the existing data and research approaches for addressing knowledge gaps for forest carbon aspects of transitioning plantations. If you're interested check out the abstract and full research paper. 8) Local Marlborough company Carbonscape update - Chemical engineer Ivan Williams believes the worldwide ‘megatrend’ of electrification could mean big business for CarbonScape, the company he runs which is headquartered in Blenheim and which aims to supply a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries: graphite. He says “We hold the key to a tech which can make batteries greener, cheaper. Our mission in a sense is decarbonisation through renewable battery material. We’re nearing the end of validation with a major player and that will be the end of a small Marlborough story and the beginning of a global success story for sustainable battery technology.” The full article is available in the online magazine, NZ Entrepreneur. 9) MDC Waste Calculator info. MDC have made a "Waste Calculator" available on their website. The calculator will work out costs associated with fees paid, time involved and distance travelled in relation to both your recycling and refuse. Once you have completed the questionnaire you will be sent the results of the calculation by email. The results are based on how you answered the questions. You might be surprised at the amount of money you are paying each year. Generally, people don’t take into account their own time or the distance travelled but these should be included if we want an accurate estimate of what you are spending. The calculator will also provide an indication of the distance you travel and the amount of emissions you produce. 10) What can NZ learn from the EU? In this article "Our Climate Declaration" member Pat Baskett looks to the EU's Green Deal for inspiration on how NZ should be addressing climate change. The Green Deal sets up an Energy Efficiency Directive to reduce overall energy use, cut emissions and tackle energy poverty. Its ambitious binding annual target for reducing energy use at EU level aims to almost double the annual energy saving obligation for member states. 11) Climate Action Tracker on NZ’s inadequate climate response. New Zealand is at a turning point, which provides an opportunity to set ambitious policies to decarbonise all sectors. The country’s newly-established Climate Change Commission has reviewed the government’s climate policies, and published recommendations on a carbon budget. New Zealand is one of the few countries to have a net zero emissions by 2050 goal enshrined in law, its Zero Carbon Act, but short-term policies cannot yet keep up with that ambition. New Zealand is increasingly relying on the mitigation potential of the land use and forestry sector to meet its target rather than focusing efforts on reducing emissions from high emitting sectors. Although included in the Act, methane from agriculture and waste (over 40% of New Zealand's emissions) is exempt from the net zero emissions goal, and has a separate target (at least 24-47% reduction below 2017 levels by 2050), not yet covered by significant policies. Overall, Climate Action Tracker rates New Zealand’s current climate targets, policies and finance as “Highly insufficient”. 12) Documents reveal scale of change needed to cut emissions - The massive scale of the nationwide changes needed quickly to cut climate gas emissions was laid bare in government documents released last November. The Ministry for the Environment succinctly pulled together advice the Climate Change Commission gave the government. It said the commission's pathway to slash emissions shows the "clear departure from business as usual", and indicates the "scale and pace of change" required from key sources of emissions. The full article is available here - NOTE - New Zealand’s first three emissions budgets were planned to be set by 31 December 2021 but this has now been extended to May this year. 13) Emissions Reduction Plan discussion document joint response from Sustainable Business Council and the Climate Leaders Coalition. You can download their full Emissions Reduction Plan discussion document response titled "Transitioning to a low-emissions and climate-resilient future". In the foreword they state - "This first Emissions Reduction Plan is our opportunity to truly put our climate ambitions into action and ensure New Zealand gets on track to be a low-emissions country by 2050. The time is now for a bold plan that sets out that pathway, and crucially, mobilises all New Zealanders – government, business, NGOs and civil society alike – to meet the challenge of our times. The document provides recommendations for key policies the Government should pursue in the Emissions Reduction Plan. Critically, it also identifies the need for genuine partnership between government and business if we are to bend the emissions curve in the short amount of time we have left." 14) Report from the future: Aotearoa New Zealand is looking good in 2040 – here’s how we did it. This article printed recently in The Conversation imagines Aotearoa NZ in 2040 and what we might have done to secure our survival and avoid catastrophe. It provides some good food for thought and begs some questions.
15) The NZ Footprint Project. Dr Ella Susanne Lawton was the primary researcher for the New Zealand Footprint Project in 2013. The project looked at how different lifestyles and urban forms consumed differently and the types of changes needed to live within each person’s fair earth share. The project team was also interested in understanding the role that policy could play in the development of urban forms that support individuals and communities to reduce their individual and collective footprint. Ella is a generalist specialist with a passion for connecting people to their natural environment. She believes that science is failing to give people an honest insight into the resource constrained future we are headed for. 16) ‘ACC – Accelerating Climate Change’ report launched by 350 Aotearoa. 350 Aotearoa recently relaunched their ACC Go Fossil Free campaign in December 2021. Here is the full report. "ACC – Accelerating Climate Change" exposes the relationship between the fossil fuel industry and our public fund that is investing against the public good. Find out more about ACC’s investments in the major players, the greenhouse gas giants, and the companies whose activities have most directly affected the people of Aotearoa, Pacific Islanders, and frontline communities across the world. 17) Para Kore. I came across this initiative working towards living in a world without waste recently and wanted to share it with you. On their website they say - Our vision is for a thriving natural environment that nurtures our communities, marae, and whānau, who in turn contribute to the collective wellbeing of Papatūānuku and Ranginui. Through indigenous knowledge and values, Para Kore encourages re-normalisation of zero-waste, closed loop living practices and philosophies across Aotearoa. Our values of manaakitanga, whakapapa, kaitiakitanga, māramatanga and rangatiratanga guide our activities and our work with others. Our mission at Para Kore is to educate and advocate from a Māori worldview for a world without waste. 18) Pest-free NZ islands suck more carbon - international study. Many pest-free islands are sucking noticeably more carbon since introduced predators were removed, according to a study that looked at 130 New Zealand islands. Researchers used remote satellite sensing and artificial intelligence to track whether removing invasive pests from islands had boosted tree cover and density on 460 islands globally, including Little Barrier, Motiti, Raoul, Great Mercury and Campbell islands. Check out the full Stuff article. 19) Fortescue Future Industries to investigate repurposing parts of New Zealand oil refinery. Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) and Refining NZ (RNZ) have agreed to investigate repurposing facilities at the RNZ Marsden Point oil refinery to produce green hydrogen and green hydrogen products. FFI and RNZ have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to study the commercial and technical feasibility of producing, storing, distributing, and exporting industrial-scale green hydrogen and green hydrogen products from the decommissioned RNZ site as it transitions to an import-only fuel terminal. “Green hydrogen production at Marsden Point will potentially deliver energy security, good local jobs, and the decarbonisation of local heavy industry – all while reducing emissions for New Zealand,” Dr Forrest said. Check out the full statement on their website. Here's an extract from another statement about developments by FFI, this time at their facility in WA.There are several dominoes that have to stack up to make green hydrogen work. One is cheap energy and the other is cheap electrolysers. Australia has abundant sunshine to provide the energy. Now, Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) is working on the next piece of the puzzle, electrolysers, making hydrogen using an electrolyser designed and built by the FFI team. They succeeded in this 10 days ago, producing industrial-grade hydrogen for the first time in their Western Australia facility. For those interested in more information about the hydrogen revolution that some see as an essential component of reducing our fossil fuel use quickly this article and this one are both worth a read. 20) New Zealand company that could revolutionise carbon capture gets $1m funding. A company spun out of the University of Canterbury has raised $1 million from private investors to progress methods that could sequester vast amounts of carbon dioxide. The process starts with a common mineral called olivine. Capturing all the Earth’s carbon emissions for 2021 would require 16 per cent of the olivine deposit located in Red Hills, near Nelson. An olivine deposit in Oman is large enough to sequester all man-made carbon emissions for the next 1000 years, according to Dr Allan Scott, an associate professor of civil engineering at the university. Olivine can be processed into magnesium hydroxide, which has long been recognised as an efficient carbon capture material. This means that carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas, is converted into a different substance and does not become CO2 again. The method would most suit industrial-level carbon emissions, Scott said. In this future scenario, a powdery form of magnesium hydroxide would be transported to a factory and combined with its CO2 emissions to produce a “safe carbonate substance which can be repurposed for a variety of uses from masonry construction blocks to cement additives,” he said. “Our method is capable of significantly reducing CO2 emissions that is not only environmentally friendly, but is also scalable and profitable,” said Scott. “We’ve not found any other method out there right now that comes close. Yet olivine has been overlooked in the rush to explore ways of tackling climate change, van Dongen said. "It absorbs CO2 very easily," van Dongen told Dezeen. "One tonne of olivine sand can take in up to one tonne of CO2, depending on the conditions. You just have to spread it out and nature will do its job." European climate initiative Climate-KIC estimates that olivine could capture 850,000 tonnes of CO2 if it was used in small-scale projects in Rotterdam alone. Potential uses include fertiliser and a replacement for sand and gravel in landscaping projects. Van Dongen said that the potential of natural materials such as olivine is being ignored as researchers and startups rush to develop more complex ways of reducing atmospheric carbon. "One problem is the fact that research institutes that have or receive funding for CO2 absorption can’t patent the spreading of a mineral," she said. "We are so stuck in thought patterns of industrialisation and capitalism that naturally occurring reactions can't win against the tech solutions." You can see more info in this Stuff article, this article and the Project Vesta website, which looks at the potential of "Coastal Carbon Capture". Their "process aims to accelerate the natural chemical weathering of the mineral olivine by spreading large amounts of ground olivine-containing rock onto coastlines where it can dissolve in seawater, thereby increasing the rate of CO2 absorption by the ocean (Bach et al. 2019). When olivine dissolves in water, it drives the below reaction to the right, thus increasing CO2 uptake, increasing pH, and generating alkalinity. As a result, this process has the potential co-benefit of counteracting ocean acidification." I haven't gone into the detail of the Project Vesta in depth but do wonder about what the net gain in CO2 sequestered by the process would be, after allowing for what I presume would be considerable use of fossil fuels to mine, grind and then transport the Olivine rock to suitable coastlines to be deposited. I couldn't see any analysis of this but the science of using Olivine rock to sequester CO2 is certainly interesting. 21) World total energy supply by source. I found it quite sobering looking at the graphs on the International Energy Agency (IEA) website showing the relative energy use from different sources over the last 40 years and the proportions of that energy which comes from renewable sources, fossil fuels and nuclear. If you're interested too you can check it out on their website. 22) An interesting graphic showing the steady rise in reported disasters over the last few decades. 23) Scientists watch giant ‘doomsday’ glacier in Antarctica with concern. Twenty years ago, an area of ice thought to weigh almost 500bn tonnes dramatically broke off the Antarctic continent and shattered into thousands of icebergs into the Weddell Sea. The 1,255-sq-mile (3,250-sq-km) Larsen B ice shelf was known to be melting fast but no one had predicted that it would take just one month for the 200-metre-thick behemoth to completely disintegrate. Glaciologists were shocked as much by the speed as by the scale of the collapse. “This is staggering. It’s just broken apart. It fell over like a wall and has broken as if into hundreds of thousands of bricks”, said one. This week, ice scientists meeting in New Orleans warned that something even more alarming was brewing on the West Antarctic ice sheet – a vast basin of ice on the Antarctic peninsula. Years of research by teams of British and American researchers showed that great cracks and fissures had opened up both on top of and underneath the Thwaites glacier, one of the biggest in the world, and it was feared that parts of it, too, may fracture and collapse possibly within five years or less. For more detail check out the full Guardian article. 24) Poorer countries spend five times more on debt than climate crisis. “Heidi Chow, executive director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said lower income countries will be raising the impact of debt on their ability to tackle climate change at Cop26 meeting in Glasgow this weekend. Lower income countries are handing over billions of dollars in debt repayments to rich countries, banks and international financial institutions at a time when resources are desperately needed to fight the climate crisis,” she said. "In Glasgow, wealthy polluting nations need to stop shirking their responsibilities and provide climate finance through grants, as well as cancel debts.” Check out the full article. 25) World's most powerful tidal turbine - This short 12 minute video is about a Scottish system to harvest tidal power first trialed last year. It seems quite innovative and simple. The world's oceans hold almost unimaginable amounts of energy, but harnessing that energy in a way that can provide a predictable and reliable source of electrical power has proven to be very difficult. Now a jumbo jet sized floating platform supporting two large turbines has been launched off the coast of Scotland, providing new hope for a potentially influential industry. The producer of the video has a YouTube channel focussed on climate and sustainable energy called "Just Have a Think". He has a wide selection of videos on new battery and energy technologies that are relatively short with good graphics for anyone interested. 26) Gelion Energy. Australia-based Gelion, whose non-flow zinc-bromide battery technology was spun out of the University of Sydney, has signed a deal that could see it supply hundreds of megawatt-hours of battery systems for power projects in Papua New Guinea, starting next year. Gelion’s battery technology uses an electrolytic gel that is inherently fire retardant. In a recent test by the company’s tech team, the battery did not catch fire, and even continued to operate, while being heated on a barbeque plate at about 700 degrees for half an hour. On a practical level, this means the Endure battery systems can operate at temperatures up to 50°C without the need for air-conditioning systems. Other advantages include that the batteries can be discharged to zero volts without impacting performance, are more energy dense and last longer than traditional lead-acid batteries, and offer a safe and recyclable alternative to lithium-ion batteries for stationary storage. “Gelion’s robust and scalable zinc-bromide Endure batteries, coupled with large-scale solar energy could provide remote PNG communities with an affordable, renewable and robust solution for their energy needs,” said Mayur managing director Paul Mulder. Check out the full article. 27) News Corp’s climate pivot perpetrates a new fraud and draws us closer to climate catastrophe. Dr Bronwyn Kelly is the Founder of Australian Community Futures Planning (ACFP) . She is the author of "By 2050: Planning a better future for our children in 21st century democratic Australia". Here is an extract from a recent article she wrote. Not only does News Corp’s new climate change campaign come after years of spreading climate misinformation, it is also simply replacing its last fraud with another. For the past decade, stalwarts of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp have claimed that climate change is a hoax and a fraud perpetrated on the Australian people. News Corp has orchestrated a campaign of climate misinformation so successful that it has resulted in some of the most harmful policy decisions imaginable for a 21st century developed country. That the misinformation was deliberate is obvious from the fact that it was stubbornly sustained as an editorial direction running contrary, year after year, to the vast majority of scientific findings. Hypocrisy and lies were even proudly admitted to by some commentators. 28) You can’t beat climate change without tackling disinformation. Over more than a century, PR firms built and fine-tuned a machine to deceive the public, writes Amy Westervelt for The Nation. In the past month or so, climate disinformation has been making its way into the news more than usual. There was the House Oversight Committee’s climate disinformation hearing in October, and then, just days later, leaked documents from Facebook revealed its role in spreading climate denial. The Oversight Committee’s investigation continues, as does the work to fully understand social media’s role in disinformation, about climate and otherwise. But for all we know about disinformation and how dangerously effective it can be, tackling the problem rarely makes its way into conversations focused on climate solutions. This raises the question: How are you going to implement new green technology or policies without eliminating the obstacle that’s helped block both for decades? We don’t necessarily have a solution to climate disinformation yet. But it’s clear it will not be dismantled by a company policy here and a congressional investigation there. A problem this large and complex requires concerted effort to solve—and we can’t even start until a critical mass of people realise that doing so is critical to the success of any climate solution. Check out the full Newsroom article. 29) Airlines flying near-empty ‘ghost flights’ to retain EU airport slots. This article highlights the ultimate in human stupidity and ignorance of the crisis we are facing. European airlines forced to fly empty planes so they can retain their landing rights at different airports! 30) WA State Government to unlock land for renewable energy and economic diversification. Exciting new large-scale carbon farming opportunities on Crown and pastoral land.
Lands Minister Tony Buti today announced proposed changes to Western Australia's Land Administration Act to introduce a new, more flexible form of land tenure for unallocated Crown land and pastoral land. The changes mean WA will be better placed to leverage opportunities in the rapidly-growing renewable energy sector which requires large areas of land for operations like carbon farming, wind farms, solar energy and hydrogen production. Check out the full media statement. 31) The role of energy demand reduction in achieving net-zero in the UK. This study was undertaken by the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), and provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of the role of reducing energy demand to meet the UK’s net-zero climate target. This report highlights the critical importance of developed countries reducing their energy demand if we are to have any chance collectively of meeting a 2050 net zero target. In the report they state - Without energy demand reduction we will not achieve the UK’s Sixth Carbon Budget target in 2035 of 78% below 1990 levels, or our 2050 net-zero target. None of our Low Energy Demand (LED) scenarios compromise our quality of life. Instead, they seek to enhance it with numerous co-benefits associated with healthier diets, active living, clean air, safe communities, warm homes, rebalancing work and driving down inequality. All this is possible while halving the UK’s energy demand. There are clear advantages associated with energy demand reduction in achieving our path to net-zero compared to other options. Lowering energy demand has five important effects:
Check out the full report on the CREDS website. 32) Belgian parliament votes to recognise international crime of ecocide. There is ongoing steady progress towards the crime of ecocide being adopted internationally thanks largely to the efforts of the Stop Ecocide group. The Belgian parliament has adopted, by a strong majority, a resolution by the Ecolo-Groen parties aimed at recognising an international crime of ecocide. By adopting this resolution, the parliament is making three demands of the Belgian government. It asks: 1. to "initiate a new international treaty of the most proactive countries (a 'coalition of the willing') to prosecute and prevent ecocide at the international level"; 2. to "propose an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of The Hague to include the new crime of ecocide" (in the same way as crimes against humanity); and 3. "to report to parliament on the upcoming expert opinion on the inclusion of the crime of 'ecocide’ in the Belgian penal code ". 33) Half world’s fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036 in net zero transition. $11tn fossil fuel asset crash could cause 2008-style financial crisis, warns new study. About half of the world’s fossil fuel assets will be worthless by 2036 under a net zero transition, according to research. Countries that are slow to decarbonise will suffer but early movers will profit; the study finds that renewables and freed-up investment will more than make up for the losses to the global economy. It highlights the risk of producing far more oil and gas than required for future demand, which is estimated to leave $11tn-$14tn (£8.1tn-£10.3tn) in so-called stranded assets – infrastructure, property and investments where the value has fallen so steeply they must be written off. Check out the full article. 34) Why The "War" on Climate Change is Bipolar. For those who are reading this newsletter and have reached this far I want to finish with some further items relevant to the information in our last newsletter looking at "Limits to Growth" and "Overshoot". This first item is a blogpost from Erik Michaels printed just before COP26. Here is an extract. "...reductionist thinking (focusing on climate change instead of ecological overshoot, the cause of climate change) has led a broad portion of society to focus on emissions. Emissions are caused by energy use — the more building, manufacturing, and transportation that takes place, the more energy use occurs. The more consumption that occurs, the more energy use occurs. The entire economy operates courtesy of energy use, so the more jobs there are, the more energy use occurs. So, building new infrastructure and creating new jobs is an excellent way to RAISE emissions, not lower them. This is because increasing energy use also increases ecological overshoot. Some people claim that in order to reduce emissions, we must invest in new technology and raise efficiency of the technology we use. Unfortunately, this actually produces MORE emissions through the process of Jevons Paradox (aka the “rebound effect”). In reality, there is only one way to reduce emissions — and that is to reduce energy use. LESS technology, not more, is the answer. Of course, nobody wants to hear that or think about it. One thing which has become more and more clear as time has moved forward is that the messaging on climate change is bipolar (contradictory; incongruent; hypocritical) in its assessment. More and more articles talk about how we need this and how we need that in order to "fight" climate change DESPITE the facts that climate change is caused by ecological overshoot and building more products (especially building materials) only increases ecological overshoot. Some articles discuss ideas which have already been proven by science to be impossible. 35) The Enigma of Climate Inaction: On the Human Nature of Policy Failure. I highly recommend this talk by Professor Bill Rees. It is one of the best I've listened to recently. He is a bio-ecologist, ecological economist and former Director and Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. His early research focused on environmental assessment but gradually extended to the biophysical requirements for sustainability and the implications of global ecological trends. Along the way, he developed a special interest in modern cities as ‘dissipative structures’ and therefore as particularly vulnerable components of the total human ecosystem. You can learn more about him on his "Post Carbon Institute" website. His talk is a very insightful analysis of how human behaviours have resulted in the predicament we find ourselves in. He says the modern human mind has a limited capacity to cope with complexity pointing out that climate change is only one of many symptoms of ecological overshoot and that the human enterprise is using resources and generating wastes in excess of the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the ecosphere. 36) Do the Math - Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options – by Tom Murphy. Tom Murphy is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. Following his natural instincts to educate, Murphy is eager to get people thinking about the quantitatively convincing case that our pursuit of an ever-bigger scale of life faces gigantic challenges and carries significant risks. ….ignoring physical limits is unwise when suddenly 8 billion people are scooping out the inheritance of Earth’s finite one-time resources as fast as humanly possible. We have not seen the full consequences yet, and can no longer take the foundation for granted, as we have already used up a shocking fraction of Earth’s offerings in the blink of an eye on timescales of evolution or even of civilization. We are chewing on the power cord to our life support machine, as if it’s just another fun choice on the menu. It’s the worst choice we could make, as exciting as Amazon deliveries might be. If you want to see more check out Tom's full blogpost. 37) The real state of the economy. "Surplus Energy Economics" is another interesting blogsite with regular contributions from Dr Tim Morgan. Here is an extract from a recent blog to give you a feel for the content. It highlights a recurring theme for those of us who are concerned about overshoot and it's implications. We must face up to the inescapable fact that there are limits to what resources the planet can continue to provide us. We understand two central realities that are neither known to, nor accepted by, the orthodox approach to economics. First, we are aware of the critical distinction between the ‘real’ economy of goods and services and the ‘financial’ economy of money and credit. Second, we recognize that the real or material economy is an energy system, in which prosperity is a function of the availability, value and cost of energy. This understanding enables us to define the current economic predicament. The financial economy has grown rapidly, driven by unprecedentedly expansive credit and monetary policies. The real economy, meanwhile, has decelerated towards de-growth, because the energy equation has become progressively more unfavourable. This has opened up a gap between the ‘two economies’ of energy and money. The wider this gap becomes, the greater are the forces trending towards a restoration of equilibrium. The take-off in inflation is a logical sign of the return of equilibrium, because prices are the point of intersection between the real economy and its financial proxy. In terms of anticipating the future, the forced restoration of equilibrium between the financial and the material economies is critical. The energy economy, shaped by physical realities, cannot be made to align itself with its financial counterpart. Therefore, the return of equilibrium must involve shrinking the financial system back into proportion with the underlying economy. 38) Understanding Collapse - Exploring some of the key ideas surrounding collapse. Here is a short description of the FAN Initiative group from their website - The FAN Initiative is a set of colleagues deeply concerned about what we see as breakdowns in bio-physical and societal systems. Science can and should guide our response to this predicament. Others with their hands on the levers of governance, education, economy, and worldview shaping belief systems should at least have the scientific information readily available. We collect and contribute information to this site. This site is our contribution. The FAN helps us navigate the threat of catastrophic collapse even as deep fissures and fractures become evident. Here is an extract from a recent posting on their site titled "Understanding Collapse". To the best of our knowledge, humanity faces an unprecedented global crisis within a timescale that calls for a different approach than simply addressing it as a potentially soluble set of isolated problems. Our civilization is an extraordinary thing. Compared to other civilizations in the past (say, the Maya or the Roman Empire), ours is vastly, vastly more colossal and intricate than any of these. We should be mindful that whatever the anxieties of the moment, our human system – our civilization – is not yet broken. It is highly organized and coherent, being remarkably efficient at solving problems. We have transportation, food supply chains, raw materials and manufacturing, public security, the financial system, sanitation, health and welfare, energy generation, power grids and many other things that are intact and functioning incredibly well. The fact that we can buy food in the supermarket tomorrow or plan a meeting at the other end of the planet and reasonably expect to be there half a year from now, implies a casual acceptance of the stability of highly complex conditions. We have this tighter and tighter, more efficient machine running under the hubcap of our normal lives. It has brought us many benefits. We don’t notice it, because it works. But it is building a vulnerability within itself. As civilization evolves, it is increasing in complexity, interdependence, the speed of processes and delocalization of the systems we have come to depend upon. 39) Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth. Here is an extract from an article written by James Lovelock and printed in the Guardian late last year. James is now 102 years old and still contributing. Good on him! I don’t know if it is too late for humanity to avert a climate catastrophe, but I am sure there is no chance if we continue to treat global heating and the destruction of nature as separate problems. That is the wrongheaded approach of the United Nations, which is about to stage one big global conference for the climate in Glasgow, having just finished a different big global conference for biodiversity in Kunming. This division is as much of a mistake as the error made by universities when they teach chemistry in a different class from biology and physics. It is impossible to understand these subjects in isolation because they are interconnected. The same is true of living organisms that greatly influence the global environment. The composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and the temperature of the surface is actively maintained and regulated by the biosphere, by life, by what the ancient Greeks used to call Gaia. I am not hopeful of a positive outcome at Cop26, knowing who is participating. I was not invited to Glasgow, though that is hardly a surprise. As well as being 102 years old, I am an independent scientist, and the university academics have never been comfortable with that. But my fellow humans must learn to live in partnership with the Earth, otherwise the rest of creation will, as part of Gaia, unconsciously move the Earth to a new state in which humans may no longer be welcome. The virus, Covid-19, may well have been one negative feedback. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier. Nga mihi, Budyong. Welcome to the next CKM newsletter. I have included quite a wide range of items this time with an initial focus on a big question facing humanity. What are the limits to growth for humanity and how close are we to reaching some of those limits?
1) Are there biophysical limits to growth? If so, how should public policy respond?Lesley and I recently sat in on a webinar organised by Victoria University School of Government and the Wise Response Society. The webinar was addressing the following question - Economic growth has become culturally, politically and institutionally engrained at a global scale. Is that sustainable? The four international speakers who did the presentations were -
The youtube video is available here - The following comments from the first speaker Simon Michaux will give you a feel for the topic. Current industrialization has a foundation in the continuous supply of natural resources. The methods and processes associated with this foundation have significant momentum. This paradigm will not be undone easily. Human nature and human history make it so. Currently, our industrial systems are absolutely dependent on non-renewable natural resources for energy sources. Current thinking is that all industrial businesses, will replace a complex industrial ecosystem that took more than a century to build. This system was built with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known (oil), in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and unlimited mineral resources. This task is hoped to be done at a time when there is comparatively very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, and an unprecedented number of human populations, embedded in a deteriorating environment. It is apparent that the goal of industrial scale transition away from fossil fuels into non-fossil fuel systems is a much larger task than current thinking allows for. The majority of infrastructure and technology units needed to phase out fossil fuels has yet to be manufactured. Recycling cannot be done on products that have yet to be manufactured. It is clear that society consumes more mineral resources each year. It is also clear that society does not really understand its dependency on minerals to function. Availability of minerals could be an issue in the future, where it becomes too expensive to extract metals due to decreasing grade. Further info about the speakers and copies of the slides in the video are available here - 2) Rethinking Climate Change. This recently released paper from RethinkX has a very different view on the possibilities for change in the next 10 - 20 years. The authors believe we can take a path resulting in alternative "Disruptions, Implications, and Choices" from the ones being articulated in the above "Limits to Growth" webinar so some quite major contradictions are apparent if you study both viewpoints. The underlying question of whether "Green Growth" or "Degrowth" is the more realistic path forward also arises. I like to keep an open mind to possibilities but I have to say both viewpoints portend major ongoing disruptions to life as we know it. I firmly believe we all need to think seriously about these issues and make every effort to look at what changes and preparations for disruption we can make in our own lives and how we can encourage those in our community to do the same. We need more resilience in our families, communities, country and planet if we want to maintain a caring and supportive society on this one little life giving jewel floating in space. This statement will give you a feel for what is contained in the RethinkX paper. Humanity Can Choose to Reduce Emissions 90% by 2035 through the Disruption of Energy, Transportation, and Food with Existing Technologies. Technology disruptions already underway in the energy, transportation, and food sectors have extraordinary implications for climate change. These three disruptions alone, driven by just eight technologies, can directly eliminate over 90% of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide within 15 years. Market forces can be leveraged to drive the bulk of global GHG emissions mitigation because the technologies required are either already commercially available and competitive today, or can be deployed to market before 2025 with the right societal choices. The same technologies will also make the cost of carbon withdrawal affordable, meaning that moonshot breakthrough technologies are not required to solve the ‘Last Carbon Problem’ and go beyond net zero from 2035 onwards. Our previous research has shown that disruptions of the energy, transportation, and food sectors are inevitable. Solar, wind, and batteries (SWB) will disrupt coal, oil, and gas. Autonomous electric vehicles (A-EVs) providing transportation-as-a-service (TaaS) will disrupt internal combustion engines and private vehicle ownership. And precision fermentation and cellular agriculture (PFCA) will disrupt meat, milk, and other animal products. The three disruptions are already unfolding simultaneously, and their implications for climate change are profound. Yet it will be up to us to decide whether or not we deploy these technologies worldwide rapidly enough to avoid dangerous climate change. Here are some useful Q&A’s on the topic of cellular production of animal products for anyone interested. Microbial protein factories can process yeasts, bacteria, fungi and algae. It takes years to grow animals, months or years to grow plants, while microbes can double their biomass in a matter of hours. Many microorganisms offer high protein content of over 50% by dry weight. They grow extraordinarily fast, are self-sufficient and require only simple and inexpensive feedstocks. And here is some good info available on the Prime Minister’s Science Advisor’s website on the same topic. 3) More evidence we may be reaching the Limits to Growth on Planet Earth. A remarkable new study by a director at KPMG, one of the largest accounting firms in the world has found that a famous, decades-old warning from MIT about the risk of industrial civilization collapsing appears to be accurate based on new empirical data. As the world looks forward to a rebound in economic growth following the devastation wrought by the pandemic, the research raises urgent questions about the risks of attempting to simply return to the pre-pandemic ‘normal.’ In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources. Gaya Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, a Swiss thinktank, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show the controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was – apparently – right on time. Coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, from western US and Siberian wildfires to German floods and a report that suggests the Amazon rainforest may no longer be able to perform as a carbon sink, Herrington’s work predicted the collapse could come around 2040 if current trends held. Research by Herrington, a rising star in efforts to place data analysis at the center of efforts to curb climate breakdown, affirmed the bleaker scenarios put forward in a landmark 1972 MIT study, The Limits to Growth, that presented various outcomes for what could happen when the growth of industrial civilization collided with finite resources. She says there is nothing inevitable about its predictions – even now. “The key finding of my study is that we still have a choice to align with a scenario that does not end in collapse. With innovation in business, along with new developments by governments and civil society, continuing to update the model provides another perspective on the challenges and opportunities we have to create a more sustainable world.” “The necessary changes will not be easy and pose transition challenges but a sustainable and inclusive future is still possible,” said Herrington. The best available data suggests that what we decide over the next 10 years will determine the long-term fate of human civilization. Although the odds are on a knife-edge, Herrington pointed to a “rapid rise” in environmental, social and good governance priorities as a basis for optimism, signalling the change in thinking taking place in both governments and businesses. She told me that perhaps the most important implication of her research is that it’s not too late to create a truly sustainable civilization that works for all. You can read more here and here - The full KPMG report is available here - 4) Marlborough coal users. Tom Powell and myself have been putting some time and energy into investigating which local businesses and public facilities are currently using coal for process heat. The government has signaled that all coal users have until 2037 to undergo conversion to other fuel sources. Woodbourne Airbase, Marlborough Hospital, Marlborough Girls College and Springlands school are currently using coal and conversion options are being investigated. The main private coal users in our region are Talleys, CMP (Anzco) meat processing plant at Riverlands, Dominion Salt and Thymebank greenhouses. Kinzett greenhouses were early adopters and converted to burn woodchip in 2009. We recently sat in on a very interesting and informative webinar presented by DETA Consulting with the topic being "South Island Thermal Fuel Transition Impact Assessment". DETA conducted a survey of process heat users in the South Island. The survey looked at process heat sites of greater than 500KW, which would include most industrial users but exclude small users, such as schools. Users were asked what they had installed and what plans they have to convert from fossil fuel to renewable sources. Due to the low cost and availability of coal on the South Island, most process heat is currently from coal. You can view Tom's notes on the webinar here - If you want to access the full webinar it is available here - You need to enter your email address to get access and then look for it under 2021 webinars. For anyone who is interested in this topic they have also posted a new webinar on Sep 22 titled "Decarbonising Industrial Process Heat". 5) The delay to New Zealand’s emissions reduction plan is embarrassing – we need action now. This recent development is not good news. NZ is being seen more and more internationally as a laggard. And this is a Labour - Greens government! Why is the urgent action required taking so long to happen? Is this government too scared to stand up to the agricultural lobby and other vested interests? The extract below is from an article written by Adam Currie from Generation Zero. The New Zealand government has announced a five-month delay to the emissions reduction plan (ERP) – its key programme for combatting climate change. This is gutting – climate decisions by many organisations and institutions have been delayed since 2017; first to wait for the Zero Carbon Act, then the advice of the Climate Change Commission, and now the Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP), which won’t be announced until the budget in May. The postponement even requires an embarrassing legislative change to the Zero Carbon Act to get around the December 2021 deadline for the plan, which is currently enshrined in law. Every day of delay makes the transition we will have to make to a low-carbon Aotearoa – and the ability to make it fair for affected communities – more and more difficult. New Zealand now won’t have any part of the emissions reduction plan to declare at the crucially important Cop26 in November (yet again – New Zealand didn’t attend the climate leaders summit last year either because we had no climate policies to announce). It will announce an updated nationally determined contribution (NDC), the emissions reduction target we pledge to the rest of the world. Concerningly, New Zealand last week decided not to do any public consultation whatsoever on the formation of the NDC. A report from Oxfam argued that when considering our historical responsibility, New Zealand’s “fair share” NDC would be a reduction of at least 99% below 1990 levels by 2030 – a far cry from the 11% reduction pledge in our current NDC. The full article is available here - 6) Bioenergy Association. The NZ Bionenergy Association have a regularly updated "News" page with useful items for those interested in this topic. Recent ones are on Converting Marsden Point refinery to produce Biofuels, and the New Zealand Forest Service investigating the use of forest waste for a new biofuels industry. You can check it out here - 7) Nelson City Council challenged on new library plans. Lawyers for Climate Action New Zealand has written to Nelson City Council on behalf of Zero Carbon Nelson Tasman expressing concerns about the legality of the Council’s recent decision to develop a new Library on a site near the Maitai River. Zero Carbon Nelson Tasman is calling on Nelson City Council to only make a final decision about the new Library location in conjunction with determining a climate change adaptation plan for central Nelson, to ensure that total costs to ratepayers are minimised. The group asks Council to ensure that any steps taken in relation to the proposed site on the corner of Halifax and Trafalgar Streets in the meantime are legally and practically reversible. The full article is available here - 8) $3m to save a river. This item is from December last year but I wanted to include it as an example of the benefits that can be gained from fencing and planting waterways. I'm aware those benefits can vary widely depending on soil types, but there is the potential to not only mitigate stream pollution but also remove carbon from the atmosphere. A water quality project started by a group of farmers in Otago six years ago has received a major boost with more than $3 million of government funding available to plant 216,000 native riverbank species over the next three years. Already the first 5000 have been put in along the banks of the Pomahaka River and its tributaries and the group overseeing the project is aiming to have 20,000 in the ground by the end of November. Project manager Lloyd McCall says the government funding – which will also pay for 100km of riparian fencing on farms in the district – will be awarded under the Jobs for Nature initiative. He says it is a significant development and will help continue work to improve the water quality in the 2020sqkm catchment around the river. The river has suffered degradation over many years – E.coli levels and nitrate leaching into the water are among its most pressing problems - but the work of the PWCG is beginning to turn the tide and restore the river to health. Tests in the last 12 months show the presence of E.coli has fallen by up to 90 per cent and nitrate by up to 60 per cent. 9) How to fix the Waikato peatlands. Talking about sequestering carbon this article that was the in the NZ Geographic highlights the huge potential for bogs to store carbon. I found this article fascinating. It makes a very good case for closing drains, shutting off pumps and letting some wetlands revert to bog again. Don’t call them swamps. Bogs soak up and store more carbon than forests do, but when they’re drained and used for agriculture, that immense amount of carbon is slowly released. The peat at Kopuatai draws down about 200 grams of carbon per square metre each year—which adds up to 18,000 tonnes across the whole bog.But this carbon-storing power applies only as long as a bog remains wet. Once it’s drained, oxygen enters the system, turning once-submerged carbon into carbon dioxide that escapes into the atmosphere. When drained peatland is farmed, fertilisers accelerate the carbon loss, turning a sink into a significant source. The Waikato’s drained peatlands produce between 10 and 33 tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions per hectare each year, depending on how the land is used. These emissions are from the peat itself as it decomposes once it’s exposed to oxygen. What happens if we continue to farm the peatlands currently used for pastoral agriculture? Waikato University wetland scientist and carbon researcher Dave Campbell says “It is equivalent to burning down all forests and not replacing them.” 10) Bernard Hickey: A solar panel for every roof. I’m ultimately hopeful about the ability of technology to solve this planet’s problems, if only we could dislodge the network monopolies forming into roadblocks at every turn. Markets can be wonderful things, as long as they are regulated to ensure natural monopolists and their ilk don’t do what is natural to them: use their power and scale and connections to stop new competitors eating away at their super profits. Our electricity industry is a perfect example. If we’re not careful, New Zealand’s natural headstart of having oodles of supposedly free water-powered electricity will turn into a millstone around our neck that stops us from getting anywhere near carbon zero by 2050. It’s not looking good right now. The Climate Commission assumes that car owners will opt en-masse to switch to electric vehicles, in part because it expects electricity costs to drop 30%. Right now, wholesale electricity costs have tripled in 12 months and NZ burned through one million tonnes of coal last year. Meanwhile the independent retailers keeping a lid on retail prices have all gone into their shells because the wholesale market suits the big network gentailers just fine and has burned off the little guys. Even better, the government could do to the electricity sector what was successfully done to Telecom: break up the “generator” from the “retailer” to remove that network monopoly power. Along with targeted regulatory intervention, it has worked a treat to foster lower prices and industry innovation. Here’s a big idea from left field. Why doesn’t the government break up the gentailers by holding on to the dams and windfarms with its 51% stakes in Mercury, Meridian and Genesis, and let the private shareholders keep the new independent retailers? The other option would be fund the capital requirements of a massive panel and battery rollout. It would work much faster than new builds and foster competition in one fell swoop. You can see the full article here - 11) Further information highlighting the dysfunctional nature of the NZ electricity supply system. I found this paragraph below in a recent paper by Geoff Bertram informative. The paper is titled "Problems with the “Reformed” New Zealand Electricity Market". Electrification of the economy will be central to New Zealand’s ability to meet ambitious greenhouse-gas emission targets. Again the profit motive has proven International Association for Energy Economics counter-productive in the absence of effective regulatory policy. New Zealand’s main policy instrument to place a price on carbon emissions is its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) which interacts in a strikingly perverse way with the structure of the wholesale electricity market. The market, by design, sets the spot price at the highest offer price in the generation merit-order stack, which means for most of the time one of the fossil-fuelled generators, whose costs (and hence bids) include the carbon price. Because all generators receive the same price, the effect is that electricity consumers are forced to pay carbon tax on electricity supplied from hydro and wind. But since hydro and wind generators pay no carbon tax on their operations, the resulting revenue flow goes directly to their bottom lines and asset values. The result is that the ETS which is ostensibly aimed to incentivise a move away from carbon instead creates a perverse incentive both to dampen down substitution in final energy uses away from fossil fuels towards electricity (for example, switching from internal combustion cars to electric vehicles) and for electricity generators to ensure that there is always fossil-fuelled generating plant at the market margin. Molly Melhuish has also done a succinct paper titled “What's wrong with NZ's electricity set-up?” Here is an extract from that paper. Both demand reduction and local energy supply threaten the profits and asset values of the electricity corporates. The recent blackouts, and earlier market manipulation that drove high coal generation, create high profits. Government half owns the biggest generators and fully owns Transpower. Their profits benefit Government directly, creating conflict of interest which must be eliminated. Indeed the extreme profit-driven governance of our electricity sector must be replaced with some system to confirm and promote the public interest in energy supply. There are several options, all incompatible with neoliberal philosophy and finance. Fossil energy allowed civilization to escape the bounds of local energy supply. Demand grew exponentially, as did the waste products of energy (especially carbon dioxide), agriculture and industry. Now new local energy technologies offer truly renewable and even climate-friendly energy systems, but only at a greatly reduced scale per capita. New Zealand is in a unique position to demonstrate these to a reluctant world. 12) Seven countries join US and EU in methane reduction pledge. I hope the NZ government has taken note of this recent commitment by some countries to cut their methane emissions. Of course we're all getting used to plenty of words but not much action so we'll have to wait and see what the actual outcome of this latest pledge is. The statement from the American Humane Society in the extract below, at least addresses the real solution to reducing methane emissions from agriculture. Seven countries have joined the US and EU in committing to cut their methane emissions by 30% over the next decade. On Friday, the US and EU made a joint pledge to slash methane emissions, which are mainly released from abandoned coal mines, oil and gas operations, and farming, by 2030 and encouraged other nations to do the same. Although it only stays in the atmosphere for around nine years, methane has a warming impact 84 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. It is responsible for almost a quarter of global warming to date. A paper in Environmental Research Letters earlier this year found an all-out effort to slash methane emissions could slow the rate of temperature rise by 30% and avoid 0.5C of warming by the end of the century. Campaigners armed with satellite observations and infrared cameras have shown that the scale of “fugitive emissions” of methane from oil and gas installations is widely under reported. While the EU, for one, is introducing stricter standards for monitoring and reporting emissions under its methane strategy, it will take time for this to result in better data. “We have no access to accurate data and I don’t expect the world to have access to this before 2026-2030,” Kalesi said. “There is currently no consensus in terms of the baseline and measurement methods.” In fossil fuel sectors, while the data is murky, the technological solutions are clear. In farming, responsible for more methane emissions than coal, oil and gas industries put together, there are fewer quick fixes. “In the agriculture space, there are existing technologies and practices that can be utilized to get emission reductions, but not on the order of what can be readily cut from oil and gas as well as coal,” said Jonathan Banks of Clean Air Task Force. Biden’s agriculture department is working with farmers to improve practices on a voluntary basis, according to the White House press release. A more culturally sensitive solution is for people to eat less meat, particularly from ruminants like cattle, goats and sheep that belch methane. The Humane Society of the US argues technologies “do little to address the problems inherent in industrial animal agriculture”. “A better strategy – for the environment, climate change mitigation, human health, and animal welfare – is reducing our overall consumption of animal products and making more climate-friendly food choices,” it says. The full article is available here - 13) Stealthy storage contender Form Energy reveals secret formula: Iron and air. Here is more new information on evolving battery technology. Form Energy finally lifted the veil of secrecy over its technology that purports to store clean electricity for days on end. The startup revealed that it is building iron-air batteries, a technology that has been studied for decades but never commercialized for grid storage. The announcement coincided with a profile in the Wall Street Journal and a $200 million Series D raise led by global steel and mining giant ArcelorMittal. "We felt that we had made enough progress that it was relevant to talk about," Form CEO Mateo Jaramillo told Canary Media Thursday. While it's common for lithium-ion batteries on the market today to discharge their full power capacity for up to four hours, Form's 1-megawatt project will do so for up to 150 hours, an unprecedented achievement for the storage industry. The “iron-air” system stores energy via “reversible rusting.” In discharge mode, the battery pulls in oxygen from the air to make the iron rusty. Running the process in reverse releases oxygen and returns the iron to its pre-rusty state, while charging the system. Form wants to store clean power and deliver it over 100 hours or more, which would constitute a whole new type of power plant. Jaramillo describes it as competing with gas plants, not batteries. The revelation ended a period of speculation about Form, launched as a sort of energy storage supergroup in 2017. Jaramillo built Tesla's energy storage business before joining forces with MIT battery expert Yet-Ming Chiang. Along with co-founders Billy Woodford, Ted Wiley and Marco Ferrara, they systematically examined every material that stores electricity to see if it could reach very low costs for very long durations. The full article is available here - 14) IEA:Net Zero Goal Means No More New Oil And Gas Investment Ever. The world doesn’t need any new investments in oil and gas beyond what is already approved if it hopes to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on 18th May 21, adding that the road to limiting global warming to 1.5 o C involves a rapid and radical shift away from fossil fuels. According to the IEA’s pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050, the world will not need new oil and gas projects beyond those sanctioned as of this year, the Paris-based agency said in its Net Zero by 2050 report. Instead, all new energy investments should be of the renewable variety in what the IEA refers to as an “immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies.” The agency’s ‘Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector’ also says that no new coal mines or mine extensions are required if the world is to achieve net-zero emissions in 2050. “The path to net-zero emissions is narrow: staying on it requires immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies,” the agency said. The scenario with the world reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 would mean a sharp decline in demand for fossil fuels, “meaning that the focus for oil and gas producers switches entirely to output – and emissions reductions – from the operation of existing assets,” the IEA said. “No new oil and natural gas fields are needed in the net zero pathway, and supplies become increasingly concentrated in a small number of low-cost producers”. “The pathway to achieving net-zero would result in coal demand collapsing by 90 percent by 2050 and natural gas demand slumping by 55 percent”, the IEA noted. Oil demand would plunge by as much as 75 percent to just 24 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2050, from around 100 million bpd in 2019. Thanks to Energy Watch for this item. DETA Consulting have put together a Roadmap for NZ similar to the global one from the IEA above. DETA Consulting say on their website they are an “Award-winning engineering consultancy specialising in identifying, developing and delivering carbon reduction and sustainability projects in the dairy, meat, agricultural, hotels, hospitals, schools and public sectors. Think of us as your green superhero sidekicks,” This roadmap sets out a series of steps for businesses to help them develop a carbon reduction plan and integrate it into their business.
15) Golden Bay Cement - Tyres in cement reduces carbon footprint of product. Fletcher Building recently announced the completion of its tyre project at Golden Bay Cement, which will avoid up to three million used tyres going to landfill each year and instead be used in cement manufacturing. The significant upgrade to New Zealand’s only end-to-end cement plant, which is based in Portland, Whangarei, will be officially opened today by the Honourable David Parker, Minister for the Environment. “This innovative project is a win-win-win for the environment. It reduces a significant waste problem, reuses a valuable resource, and reduces carbon emissions by about 13,000 tonnes a year,” Environment Minister David Parker said. Fletcher Building CEO Ross Taylor says this is a landmark sustainability project for manufacturing in New Zealand. “Using end-of-life tyres in cement manufacturing helps to solve a significant waste problem in New Zealand as well as improve the sustainability of a key building material. Up to 50 percent of the 6.3 million waste tyres created in New Zealand each year will now be used in cement manufacturing at the Golden Bay Cement plant instead of going into landfill. “Golden Bay Cement supplies more than half the New Zealand market as the only local cement manufacturer. “Our cement already has around 20 percent lower emissions than imported cement and using tyres is part of the decarbonization plan to reduce its footprint even further. It will also reduce our need for natural raw materials like iron sand. “Local manufacturing must compete fiercely with imports, and this investment allows us to continue doing just that. At the same time, we’re providing local jobs as well as supply chain security for the domestic building, infrastructure, and construction industries,” said Ross Taylor. Fletcher Building has a verified science-based target to reduce its emissions by 30 percent by 2030.Ross Taylor said, “Climate change is an urgent, global priority. The building and materials sector has an important role to play by changing the way that it designs, builds, sources, and manufactures the building materials used in the construction process. We are serious about transforming our business around sustainability to do our part in creating a sustainable future and reducing our carbon emissions.” The full article is available here and a video of the tyre furnace being installed is available here - 16) More than 200 health journals call for urgent action on climate crisis. More than 200 health journals worldwide are publishing an editorial calling on leaders to take emergency action on climate change and to protect health. The British Medical Journal said it is the first time so many publications have come together to make the same statement, reflecting the severity of the situation. The editorial, which is being published before the UN general assembly and the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow this November, says: “Ahead of these pivotal meetings, we – the editors of health journals worldwide – call for urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5C, halt the destruction of nature, and protect health. “Health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world, a state of affairs health professionals have been bringing attention to for decades." “The science is unequivocal; a global increase of 1.5C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse." “Despite the world’s necessary preoccupation with Covid-19, we cannot wait for the pandemic to pass to rapidly reduce emissions." “Reflecting the severity of the moment, this editorial appears in health journals across the world." “We are united in recognising that only fundamental and equitable changes to societies will reverse our current trajectory.” The full article is available here - 17) The myth of government deficits. This is an excellent Ted talk by the author of the book "The Deficit Myth - Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy" by Stephanie Kelton. In the talk she explains clearly why the question that must be asked is not, "How will you pay for it?" but "How will you resource it?" This is the central issue with financing all the environmental challenges facing us, such as global warming, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. Most politicians will lead you to believe money is a constraining factor. Listen to this talk and you will realise that is a myth and the actual constraints are the real life resources that nature provides us, not money. “Government deficits have gotten a bad rap”, says economist Stephanie Kelton. In this groundbreaking talk, she makes the case to stop looking at government spending as a path towards frightening piles of debt, but rather as a financial contribution to the things that matter -- like health care, education, infrastructure and beyond. "We have the resources we need to begin repairing our broken systems," Kelton says. "But we have to believe it's possible." 18) Update from "Stop Ecocide". There has been considerable activity in different countries around the world since the first legal definition of “Ecocide” was released in June this year. Here is a statement from the “Stop Ecocide” organisation. So much has happened since the launch of the legal definition of ecocide in June that we’ve decided to provide you with a concise “round-up” of key moments over the last 3 months. We trust this will give a flavour of the political momentum gathering around ecocide law. Progressing this law is about more than politics. It serves to reflect, in the global legal system, a simple factual truth: when we damage the Earth, there are consequences. We see it as a legal guardrail, a health and safety law for the planet, if you will. And as the law approaches, whatever our age, work, or walk of life, we can treat it as a guidance system, supporting healthy innovation and adjustment in all sectors of industry, society and education. We already know that profound changes are needed to bring humanity back within a safe operating space. Ecocide law provides a clear parameter to help that happen. You can catch up on the latest stories here - 19) The semiconductor industry has a problem. I know I continue to highlight consequences of our modern lifestyles. I believe we have a duty to keep ourselves informed of the implications of our decisions. We need to keep our heads firmly out of the sand! Demand is booming for silicon chips, which are embedded in everything from smartphones and televisions to wind turbines, but it comes at a big cost: a huge carbon footprint. The industry presents a paradox. Meeting global climate goals will, in part, rely on semiconductors. They’re integral to electric vehicles, solar arrays and wind turbines. But chip manufacturing also contributes to the climate crisis. It requires huge amounts of energy and water – a chip fabrication plant, or fab, can use millions of gallons of water a day – and creates hazardous waste. The full article is available here - 20) August Temperature Update & Gas Bag Season Approaches - James Hansen. Here is an extract from a recent blog update from James Hansen. As is usual with James he doesn’t dodge the tricky subjects. This blog addresses the inability of politicians to follow grand statements with effective actions and also the issue of whether we should be using more nuclear power to reduce fossil fuel use and therefore emissions. The full blog is available here - First the good news: NOAA’s newest prediction for the tropics has a deeper La Nina, which should keep global temperature near the 1970-2015 trend line for at least several months. That’s not entirely good news – the trend line is not a target to aim for, and a continuing La Nina keeps the tropics ripe for tropical storms. At the next El Nino, global temperature will be far above the trend line and may approach +1.5°C relative to 1880-1920. The bad news: we approach the gas bag season – the next Conference of the Parties (COP26) is scheduled for November 1-12. Gas bag politicians won’t show you the data that matter because that would reveal their miserable performances. Instead, they set climate goals for their children while adopting no polices that would give such goals a chance. Some of them may have been honestly duped about the science and engineering, but many must be blatant hypocrites. 21) Oxfam report highlights conflict between tree planting and food production. Governments and businesses hoping to plant trees and restore forests in order to reach net-zero emissions must sharply limit such efforts to avoid driving up food prices in the developing world, the charity Oxfam has warned. Planting trees has been mooted as one of the key ways of tackling the climate crisis, but the amount of land needed for such forests would be vast, and planting even a fraction of the area needed to offset global greenhouse gas emissions would encroach on the land needed for crops to feed a growing population, according to a report entitled Tightening the net: Net zero climate targets implications for land and food equity. Nafkote Dabi, climate policy lead at Oxfam and co-author of the report, explained: “It is difficult to tell how much land would be required, as governments have not been transparent about how they plan to meet their net-zero commitments. But many countries and companies are talking about afforestation and reforestation, and the first question is: where is this land going to come from?” The full article is available here - 22) 1 in 3 sheep and beef farms to forestry. Beef and Lamb New Zealand is calling for limits on carbon offsetting as new research reveals over a third of sheep and beef farms sold have gone into carbon-only titles. Beef and Lamb NZ has commissioned this independent research, which shows the transition of pastureland to forestry by carbon farming companies is driven in large part by a speculated increase in the carbon price, and the amount of afforestation here has already exceeded levels recommended by the IPCC to meet the Zero Carbon Act. Instead, the report recommends an integrated approach, where parts of farms are given over to trees, as a preferable way of meeting climate change targets.Kathryn Ryan is joined by Beef and Lamb NZ's chief executive Sam McIvor. You can listen to the full RNZ interview here - 23) Trees worth more than cows as carbon price soars. New Zealand’s carbon price is at a record high, which means planting pine trees will now fetch farmers more money than raising sheep and beef. That’s according to an analysis from interest.co warning that the country’s farmers, as well as its timber industry, now face pressure from a surging carbon price. The result could be that productive land now used for livestock and lumber is turned over to forest plantations that suck up carbon emissions. Dairying, as well as growing fruits and vegetables, is still more profitable than trees. Carbon farming, as it’s sometimes known, isn’t a new idea, but the economics have shifted remarkably in recent years. The country’s main mechanism for combating climate change (for now) is the emissions trading scheme and it has been acting a little odd in recent weeks. For starters, the price of carbon credits has soared. As Newsroom reports, an auction earlier this month saw the price that polluters needed to pay to buy a credit for a tonne of emissions break through an artificial ceiling set by the government. As a result of going above $50, the government tried to flood the market with new credits to keep prices down. It didn’t quite work and prices are above $60. The country will also need to figure out a way to reduce emissions in the future by 1.6 million tonnes, because those new credits need to come from somewhere. The full article is available here - I must admit I find the whole ETS scheme a little tricky to get my head around. This article seems to show that we are, as a country, walking a tight rope. Clearly we need to have a realistic price on carbon to deter emissions so a climbing price is a good thing. The consequences of humanity not reducing our collective emissions fast enough are well documented. But we're trying to make this change in the way we manage our emissions without collapsing our economy in the process. Either way this seems to me to be evidence that more disruptions are inevitable. 24) Rapidly increasing chance of record shattering temperature extremes. In recent years, heat waves have broken long-standing records by large margins. In spring 2020, Siberia saw exceptional temperatures, and Europe experienced an extreme heat wave in 2003 that killed more than 70,000 people. Now a new study published in Nature Climate Change has found that the probability of extreme record-shattering events is increasing at an alarming rate. These events are unprecedented in the observational record and nearly impossible without climate change. The researchers warned that many places in the world have not yet seen anything close to the intensity of heat waves now possible but should expect them in the coming decades. As the climate warms, you would expect heat waves to break previous records, but not necessarily by large margins. But when Erich Fischer at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and his colleagues looked at large climate model ensembles, they found that simulated events in the near future broke historic records by very large margins. Somewhat surprisingly, the simulations often did not show the intensity of heat waves steadily increasing. Instead, the simulations showed stagnant decades with unbroken or marginally broken records, followed by a sudden record-shattering event. The full article is available here - 25) Pacific forum leaders set permanent maritime borders, as rising seas shrink islands. Pacific island leaders have agreed that their maritime borders should be permanent, even if their countries shrink due to a future rise in sea levels caused by climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report reaffirmed this week that rising sea levels will cause shorelines to retreat along sandy coasts of most small islands, a real threat to the existence of some low lying atoll nations. “Some think of Pacific islands as small, but Pacific states have sovereign rights across a large swathe of the Earth’s surface. This declaration helps to protect Pacific sovereignty and their rightful ocean domain,” said Morgan. “Pacific island countries have led global diplomacy on oceans for decades. So this declaration continues to lead, and shape, the global discussion. It is an important diplomatic signal from all of the member states of the Pacific Islands Forum. They are telling the rest of the world, that they will not let their maritime sovereign rights be eroded by climate change”. You can access the full article here - 26) Biden-backed ‘blue’ hydrogen may pollute more than coal, study finds. The large infrastructure bill passed by the US Senate and hailed by Joe Biden as a key tool to tackle the climate crisis includes billions of dollars to support a supposedly clean fuel that is potentially even more polluting than coal, new research has found. The $1tn infrastructure package, which passed with bipartisan support, includes $8bn to develop “clean hydrogen” via the creation of four new regional hubs. The White House has said the bill advances Biden’s climate agenda and proponents of hydrogen have touted it as a low-emissions alternative to fuel shipping, trucking, aviation and even home heating. But a new study has found surprisingly large emissions from the production of so-called “blue” hydrogen, a variant being enthusiastically pushed by the fossil fuel industry and probably falling under the definition of clean hydrogen in the Senate bill. Blue hydrogen involves splitting gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide and then capturing and storing the CO2 to ensure it doesn’t heat the planet. But this process involves the incidental release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and uses a huge amount of energy to separate and then store the carbon dioxide, some of which escapes anyway. This means that the production of this hydrogen actually creates 20% more greenhouse gases than coal, commonly regarded the most polluting fossil fuel, when being burned for heat, and 60% more than burning diesel, according to the new paper, published in the Energy Science & Engineering journal. You can read more about it here and here - 27) China pledge to stop funding coal projects ‘buys time for emissions target’. Xi Jinping’s announcement that China will stop funding overseas coal projects could buy the world about three more months in the race to keep global heating to a relatively safe level of 1.5C, experts say. Although the impact will depend on implementation, China’s declaration should also help to kill off coal, which has been humanity’s primary power source for most of the last 200 years. Xi’s declaration is likely to affect at least 54 gigawatts of China-backed coal power projects, which are in active development but not yet under construction, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Lauri Myllyvirta, the centre’s lead analyst, said this was equivalent to about three months of global emissions. Despite the uncertainties over implementation, Myllyvirta said China’s announcement would accelerate decarbonisation. “Countries now know that going forward, there is no financing on the table for coal. That should clarify things a lot. Chinese delegates are going to visit Indonesia or Vietnam or Pakistan and they will be saying, ‘We don’t do coal any more, but we can help with clean energy.’ That will make a difference.” The full article is available here - And some questions arising from the policy announcement are addressed here 28) SunDrive creates sustainable, cheap solar cells with world-record efficiency. Today, almost 95% of all photovoltaic panels are based on mono- or polycrystalline silicon cells, which use precious silver to conduct electricity. Now, an Australian solar company, SunDrive, has created super-efficient and cheap solar panels that use more sustainable copper to pull the electrical current from the cells rather than silver. Indeed, the latest tests have shown how copper can serve as a reliable replacement but also can push the technology into new terrain, achieving a world-record efficiency for commercially-sized silicon solar cells of 25.54%. This efficiency surpassed the previous world record of 25.26%, held by LONGi Solar, the world’s leading manufacturer of monocrystalline solar modules. “In order to limit global warming, we will need to install terawatts of solar panels. This will require a lot of metal,” said Lennon. “Silver is a limited resource, and as it becomes more and more scarce, its price will go up, so the cost of producing solar modules will rise as well. Mining silver from lower-quality ores also produces more emissions, making the problem worse.” “Copper is much more available as a resource, it’s cheaper, and it’s also easier to recycle. The metal from copper-plated solar modules will be easier to recover from old modules and, therefore, may be more easily recycled in the future. This helps enormously from a sustainability perspective.” The full article is available here - Nga mihi nui, Budyong. 12/8/2021 National Party Climate Change Spokesperson questions whether we are really faced with a climate crisis?Read NowStuart Smith’s talk to an audience in Ashburton in early August raises an important question for New Zealanders. Where does the National Party really stand on the issue of whether we are facing a climate crisis or not. Should we be concerned about the increasing incidence of extreme weather events? You can read about his talk here - In my personal dealings with Stuart he’s given me the impression that he believes those who warn we are faced with a serious climate crisis are extremists. It is apparent that Stuart believes that the crisis is not nearly as bad as a large majority of the world’s climate scientists are stating. We have to face up to this crisis before we reach an irrecoverable situation. We may be very close to, or have already passed, climate tipping points. We won’t know for sure until we see the evidence in the rear vision mirror – that will be too late unfortunately. If Stuart was just another local Marlburian who doesn’t accept we’re faced with a crisis I could easily agree to disagree but he is also the Climate Change spokesperson for the National Party and could conceivably end up being responsible for our countries climate change policies sometime in the future. And that is a worry. So what is he basing his position on? In the above article he uses as evidence for his claim a report titled “The National climate change risk assessment: A case of science denial?” published in June this year by an outfit called “Tailrisk Economics”. Tailrisk economics is a Wellington economics consultancy. It specialises in the economics of low probability, high impact events including financial crises and natural disasters. Their report sets out to challenge the findings of the first National Climate Change Risk Assessment (NCCRA) released by the Ministry for Environment (MfE) in August last year. The full risk assessment is available on the MfE website here – I’d point out that this assessment was put together with input from more than 400 people. They were from local government, central government, the private sector, primary sector, financial sector, iwi/Māori and universities/research institutes. In the Tailrisk report they state - “The central message in the assessment is that the climate change risks are very serious, even in the relatively near term. Eight of the 43 sectoral risk assessments found that the consequences of climate change would be extreme by 2050. It is also argued that many risks need to be addressed urgently if the costs are to be mitigated, and that substantial resources need to be made available for additional adaptation research. Our review of the NCCRA found that for the most part, the assessments were not based on the ‘best available evidence’ and often consisted of little more than a recitation of the ‘five horsemen of the apocalypse’: more extreme weather events, more drought, more river flooding, higher sea levels, and more wildfires, followed by unsubstantiated claims that they will have either major or extreme consequences. Contrary to the picture painted in the assessment the science does not show that wind speeds will increase significantly, and river flood risk might actually fall overall. Droughts are likely to become more likely in drought prone areas, and there might be a few more wildfires, but these effects are likely to be outweighed by the positive impacts of climate change, including warmer weather and more fine days in summer, and the impact of carbon fertilisation on primary sector productivity. Sea level rise is a real issue but here the impacts in the NCCRA are overstated.” You can see the full report here. It is 269 pages long so there’s a lot of material and I haven’t read it all but the summary gives a good idea of the basic thinking of the author/s of the report. The use of the term “catastrophist narrative” is commonly used in the report to describe the concerns expressed in the NCCRA assessment. I’ve picked out one statement from their report to highlight this difference. “RCP 8.5 is also often described as a ‘business as usual’ scenario, which can also be misleading. For most people business as usual is more likely to be interpreted as something like the current level of emissions not a strong growth in emissions.” For me this statement ignores the obvious. Anyone who honestly analyses the data knows that “business as usual” has seen a steady inexorable growth in emissions for the last hundred years at least. That’s exactly what “business as usual” is! You can check the stats here and here - Over the past 20 years, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and industry have been steadily increasing. At the turn of the century, global emissions were roughly 23 billion metric tons, but by 2019 had reached a record high of 36.44 billion metric tons. Projections for 2020 show a reduction of two billion metric tons. The only other time during this period when emissions have dropped was in 2009, which was due to the economic downturn of the global recession. So, the only time we haven’t had rising emissions this century was a brief flattening off in 2008/09 during the financial crisis and the current drop which took a full scale global pandemic to achieve. Business as usual is rising emissions! And rising emissions is serious cause for concern. I’m left wondering why the National Party Climate Change spokesperson places so much weight on the Tailrisk report and chooses to place it’s conclusions ahead of those of the majority of reputable climate scientists and the IPCC, all of which are reflected in the NCCRA. Why does the National Party want to associate themselves with this minority viewpoint? I note that Ian Harrison, the Principal of Tailrisk Economic, was criticised in an article published in Newsroom in April last year in the midst of the hard lockdown. Tailrisk had published another report titled “Corona” in which they were highly critical of the Covid modelling being used by the Government. You can view the article here - and the full Tailrisk paper here - Ian Harrison has used the same approach in both papers, of playing down the threats and criticising and even denigrating those reputable scientists who are voicing their very real concerns. I have added this information in an attempt to highlight my deep concern about this sort of approach. Playing down the impacts of the climate crisis does not serve the best interests of our community and our country. The pandemic and the climate crisis are both examples of global threats where we are best advised to listen carefully to the scientists who work in those fields and take the contrary advice from economists and politicians with a grain of salt. How many times have we heard the word unprecedented in the last few months? The European floods, the heat dome in Canada, the fires in Siberia, Turkey and Greece, the drought in Madagascar. Is this all hyperbole and catastrophism or are Stuart and Ian missing what is right in front of them? This cartoon highlights the central issue. Should we be putting the conclusions of a little known Economics consultancy ahead of the warnings laid out in the National Climate Change Risk Assessment and supported by the findings of the IPCC? I know which view I’ll listen to. I've also added below the cartoon a short further analysis by Tom Powell of the Tailrisk report. This has some important clarification in it. Nga mihi, Budyong.  FURTHER ANALYSIS BY TOM POWELL I’ve figured out how Stuart got so far off the science of climate change induced flooding in his Ashburton talk. The Tailrisk report he references spends lots of time commenting on a 2019 NIWA report evaluating catchments and river flow in New Zealand. One of the quantities that they looked at was Mean Annual Flood (MAF) which can be estimated for different rivers based upon rainfall and catchment area and is also an output of the climate models. MAF is simply the peak flood flow of a river that can be expected in any one year. It is a statistical quantity that is useful in calculating 50 and 100 year floods, but it is not the same. Ian Harrison of Tailrisk has confused MAF with flood severity, even though the authors of the NIWA report state that these two are not the same and caution readers about the utility of MAF numbers. They are really only useful to hydrologists who want to calculate flood severity using statistical methods. The climate modelling in the NIWA report shows that MAF increases for a number of west coast rivers in the coming years (‘the wet get wetter’) but actually decreases in most Canterbury rivers. The decrease is likely due to predicted increasing drought in Canterbury. You can imagine that rivers might undergo a number of years of decreased flow due to drought, lowering their MAF, but still host large floods every few years. Stuart then carried the misinformation from Tailrisk to the Ashburton meeting. Hopefully, when Stuart questions James Shaw in Parliament about the issue (which, in the article, he said he would do) James will know the mistake Stuart (via Ian Harrison) has made in interpreting the NIWA report. A phone call to a hydrologist would have easily clarified all this! Tom Powell. Kia ora As everyone will no doubt be aware the Climate Crisis has been getting a lot of attention over the last few weeks. We've had the extreme weather events happening here in NZ with major floods in Canterbury, Buller and Marlborough and also unprecedented floods, heatwaves and wildfires occurring in many places around the planet. The stop banks were topped in several places but Marlborough seems to have dodged a bullet with the flood in the Wairau. This was the biggest flood ever recorded in the Wairau River peaking at just over 6000 cumecs at the SH1 bridge. The very heavy rainfall received in different parts of Marlborough resulted in major damage to roading and other infrastructure but it appears that the outcome could have been a lot worse. We can be thankful for the diligence of those responsible for our river defenses. I guess we are now faced with the next question though? Do we keep building our defenses higher and stronger with predictions for ongoing and more extreme rainfall events due to global warming? Or do we have to change our traditional view of river containment and flood management and give the river more room to move? Our local civil defense controller Richard McNamara was interviewed on Radio NZ on July 19th and had some pertinent words to say - "I'm not really interested in whether you believe in man-made climate change or not. The fact is our climate is changing, we're seeing wild extremes of weather, not only here, you only have to look overseas, look what happened in Germany in the last 5 days, and obviously the wildfires that have occurred in Australia and the United States and Europe etc. We are subject to the extremes of a changing climate and we as a country need to build resilience into that. We need to look at our infrastructure, we need to look at our lifelines, and we need to look at where our communities are located so that we can do our best to protect them and the livelihood that NZ depends on, so, if you're asking me a political question around whether we need to do more in the climate change space and the lifeline space which includes roading access, of course we do, from an emergency management perspective we need to do more because this isn't going to stop. This isn't the one in a hundred year flood which means we get one in a hundred years. It's not the one in a hundred year fire that you get one in a hundred years. These will be recurring and the legacy that we need to leave is one that we've recognised the danger and albeit we've left it a little late we need to work now." 1) Marlborough District Council Long Term Plan 2021-31. You can see below the response we've received from Council to our submission and presentation at the LTP hearings. "At the Council meeting on 8 June 2021 your submission was considered by elected members. The following was the outcome of this consideration and has been confirmed at the Council meeting on 24 June 2021: There is $483,000 budgeted for Climate Change investigations. The group’s concerns are valid and are being taken account of in Council's planning, whether that be our resource management plan, infrastructure design or the broader planning issues involved in new development area considerations. There will be further work done on the benefits and costs of electric and hybrid vehicles to inform our next fleet renewal. The CE’s Council vehicle is a hybrid." 2) MDC June 10th Environment Committee meeting – A report was presented titled “Efficient use of water in Marlborough”. Purpose of Report 1. To provide an update on addressing efficient use of water in the region through resource consenting and monitoring. Executive Summary 2. Inefficient allocation and use of water is potentially a significant issue in Marlborough, given that many water resources are at or are approaching full allocation. 3. The main efficient use model used by applicants in Marlborough is IrriCalc, which uses existing soils information and modelled climate data to provide estimates of water use for a list of different crop types and provides a reasonable use volume at daily, monthly and yearly rates. 4. To ensure efficient use of water for irrigation, the Council will generally not grant water permits to use water for irrigation purposes at a rate that exceeds the reasonable use calculation provided by IrriCalc. 5. All water take meters provide data via telemetry, manual submissions or on request. These meters should be verified every five years. 6. There are minimum flow requirements for many Marlborough Rivers, with restriction and rationing provisions included in consents to protect these minimum flows. Background/Context 7. Inefficient allocation and use of water is potentially a significant issue in Marlborough, given that many water resources are at or are approaching full allocation. Once allocation limits have been reached, the Council is unable to continue allocating water to other users. To give effect to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPSFM), there are a number of Objectives and associated Policies in the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan (PMEP) aimed to achieve efficient water use for any given activity. It’s good to see that - “Under the proposed Marlborough Environment Plan the aquifer FMU’s also have minimum levels at which water permit holders can be restricted, and along the coast there are also conductivity limits to protect the aquifers from salt water intrusion.” It’s also interesting to note that the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan (PMEP) stipulates, in regard to water balloting that - • Policy 5.9.1 of the PMEP outlines that once an allocation limit is reached and that part of the water resource is fully allocated, any water that subsequently becomes free to allocate to other users will only be made available to those users through a system of ballot. • A ballot is considered by water users to be the most equitable way to determine who should receive the water given the likely competition for the water amongst existing users. It avoids the situation of a person gaining access to water in preference to other potential users based on the nature of the use or because they were first to make an application. The ballot system is yet to be established. • The majority of the regions water resources are fully or over-allocated. The Wairau River is the main resource that has allocation available, as well as high flow water in other rivers that is suitable to be taken and stored in storage dams. • It should be noted that some of the allocation limits set in the Proposed Marlborough Environment Plan are under appeal, the outcome of which may have an impact on the status of water allocation in the relevant Freshwater Management Units (FMU’s) in the future. The full report is available here. It is item 10 on the June 10th Environment Committee meeting Agenda. 3) Registration of interest – Bluegums landfill gas utilisation solutions - The Marlborough District Council is seeking registrations of interest which offer cost effective and environmentally sustainable solutions for the utilisation of landfill gas. The purpose of this registration process is to ascertain market capability and to inform and assist the Council in making their decision as to the nature of further procurement processes (if any) to follow. The contract involves developing, supplying, installing and operating a system that maximises landfill gas destruction whilst putting the gas to a beneficial use such as electricity production. The Council has included a report entitled Review of Landfill Gas Destruction Options to provide some background and contextual information. Registrations of interest close at 4.00 pm on Thursday 12 August 2021. NOTE - The option of sending landfill gas to the hospital is no longer available, so that removes one of the main options. The report identifies issues with other options such as electricity or CNG production and leaves me with the impression that the end result of the process may be that the installation of a secondary flare is the likely outcome due to the size of the resource and issues associated with guaranteeing a reliable clean supply of gas. Below is an extract from the report - Background Landfill gas collected at the landfill is currently directed to an enclosed flare for destruction. We understand that as a result of recent issues with the operation of the flare, and in order to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Standard for Air Quality (NES Air) 1 , MDC is seeking options for an additional destruction mechanism for the site. MDC has requested that the following options for additional landfill gas destruction at the site be considered:
The objective of this project is to assess potential options for destroying landfill gas and provide advice on the suitability of each option to the site. We understand that MDC’s drivers for the destruction of landfill gas are: • Control of odour issues at the site. • Destruction of methane to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the site. • Compliance with regulatory requirements and management of ETS obligations. We also understand that MDC is interested in achieving a beneficial use of the landfill gas, if practicable. This objective has also been built into the assessment. You can download a copy of the full report here - 4) Climate Change page on MDC website – The council website has a page here with information about MDC actions and policies in regard to Climate Change. You can also see their regularly updated "Marlborough Climate Impact Report" which is available here. There is also a link to a MfE website page titled “Climate Change Projections for the Marlborough Region” that has some useful information including further pages such as “Adapting to Sea Level Rise” and “Climate Change Adaptation and Central Government”. 5) CKM Co-chairperson Tom Powell in local news - Tom Powell is an optimist. The world might be in a climate emergency, but the Climate Karanga Marlborough member says his glass is always half full. “You probably talk to climate activists... there’s those that are pessimists, there’s those that don’t see much hope,” Powell said. “I’m hoping for the best, I’m hoping that we can turn this thing around so our children, and our children’s children, can have a future that was as good, maybe better, than ours was. Although, he admits he thinks it might be hard to grow up in a world better than when he grew up.” The full article printed in Stuff can be viewed here - 6) Businesses for Climate Action - Climate Solutions for Te Tauihu Businesses - CKM have been approached by Bruce Gilkison who’s involved with a group called “Businesses for Climate Action” (B4CA) that is based in Nelson/Tasman. We're planning to have a Zoom discussion with representatives from B4CA at our next meeting. Below is some info from their website and you can view the site here - In Te Tauihu (the top of the south) local businesses are taking the lead in creating a zero carbon Aotearoa within a resilient sustainable economy, adaptable to both the opportunities and disruptions of climate change. Together we can transform our business community to create lasting, positive impact. The best place to start is to measure a business’s carbon emissions, so you know how big they are and where they’re coming from.Our aim is to have 1000 businesses across Te Tauihu measure their carbon footprint by the end of 2021. This is an ambitious target but slowing climate change is a big challenge. Businesses that measure their footprints will learn about their emissions – how large they are, and where they come from – and many of these businesses will be inspired to reduce them… perhaps even to ‘net zero’. So the greater the number of businesses that measure their emissions, the closer the whole region could get to zero. To that end, we’re facilitating workshops, seminars and events that provide connection, education and inspiration. 7) Woodbourne NZ Defense Force Coal boilers. Last year the NZ Defense Force (NZDF) applied to the MDC for a resource consent to renew its permit to discharge to air from its operations at Woodbourne. This includes permission to discharge from two 1,172kW coal fired boilers. According to EECA these are the only two coal fired burners operated by the NZDF in NZ. CKM and Coal Action Network Aotearoa (CANA) have been working together to investigate what plans the NZDF are making to replace these coal fired boilers with more a more suitable low emissions option. The current government agreed in November 2020 to establish "The Carbon Neutral Government Programme" They state - "This is a long-term work programme that aims to make a number of government organisations carbon neutral from 2025, and help them accelerate their emissions reduction journeys." This means these government organisations, including the NZDF will be required to offset emissions after 2025 to achieve carbon neutrality. In response to an OIA request MBIE released information about progress with this program in June in which it states: This overall ambition would reflect the intent of the Carbon Neutral Government Programme and our public announcements by:
The Government is making changes to resource management legislation which mean that greenhouse gas emissions can be taken into account, but these changes will not come into effect in time to influence the resource consent process. Tim Jones of CANA has told us that he expects the NZ Defence Force will replace coal burning at Woodbourne with renewable energy sources long before the 35-year term of new resource consent application is up, but nevertheless, it's of great concern that it's still possible in 2021 for the use of coal to be consented for such a long period. "It's time to phase out the mining and use of coal everywhere in Aotearoa," Tim Jones said. "If this Government is serious about the climate emergency it has declared, it has to close the regulatory loopholes that let coal projects slip through the cracks." CANA is calling for the Government to announce a ban on new and expanded coal mines and is working with other groups for an end to exploring, prospecting and mining fossil fuels in New Zealand. You can sign the "No New Fossil Fuel Permits or Expansions in Aotearoa" petition here - This is an area we need to follow up on to check what progress has been made with phasing out the coal boilers. You can view the full MBIE "Report on Implementation and Further Decisions on the Carbon Neutral Government Programme" here - 8) Forest and Bird report on forest damage caused by browsing animals. Culling deer, possums, goats, feral pigs and other invasive mammals could let established native forests recover to the point where they sucked in 15 per cent of New Zealand’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions, says a report from Forest and Bird. The conservation advocacy group has used a report by Crown science agency Scion, as well as independent estimates of the numbers of feral mammals and other information, to estimate how much eradicating pests could benefit the climate. More than a decade of monitoring at native forest plots scattered the length of the country shows New Zealand’s established forests are in equilibrium – sucking in roughly as much carbon dioxide as they release. The full article is available here. The scientific research paper is available here. And you can listen to Kevin Hackwell from Forest and Bird talking about the report on Radio NZ here - 9) EV Enhanced and Kiwi Ingenuity - I wanted to give a plug for the company "EV Enhanced" in Christchurch to highlight their efforts to extend the life of EV's and reuse EV batteries for solar systems when they are no longer suitable for vehicle use. They are a good example of Kiwi ingenuity. On their website they state - We are here to develop and offer upgrades that enable existing electric vehicles(EV) to remain useable, relevant and desirable as they age. By applying current technology, it is very feasible to make these vehicles significantly better, faster and with longer-range than when they were sold new.The intention is to extend the useable lifetime of these vehicles as much as possible, firstly for the early adopters that originally purchased these vehicles and then for the following owners as they are ready to embrace this superior technology. You can check out their site here - 10) Who's insuring coastal New Zealand and will they continue? That's the question posed by Canterbury University Lecturer of Civil Systems Engineering Tom Logan in a very informative piece for The Conversation. For those living in coastal properties around New Zealand, the threat of climate change is very real and Tom is asking where is the line for insurers? And who will be providing compensation if insurers balk at the risks? He also talked to Jesse Mulligan on Radio NZ about the issues he's raised in the article. You can listen to the interview here - This topic has been getting plenty of attention lately. There is also a very good article in the July 17 copy of the Listener. One of the ideas being discussed is that of “climate leases”. This topic was also addressed in another RNZ interview in February this year. Here's an extract from that interview - Belinda Storey is a climate economist who suggests there should be a legal framework for properties to be converted from freehold to leasehold when escalating hazards from sea level rise leave homes suitable only for temporary use, or retreat. Legal frameworks for changing a property from freehold to leasehold haven’t caught up with climate change threat, she says. “There is a time limit being put on locations that have escalating hazards, but at the moment our legal structures in terms of property rights assume that we can remain in place indefinitely.” Under leasehold someone else owns the land and the house is owned by the buyer of the leasehold. To convert an at-risk property to leasehold would require some form of compensation to the owner, she says. The buyer of the land would most likely be local or central government – part of her ongoing research is to develop tools to assess what the value of such land is. Currently it is significantly over-valued and coastal properties continue to attract a premium, she says. “The longer we leave it the worse the problem becomes, so the market isn’t taking into account these risks. “You’ve got this bigger and bigger accumulation of assets and unfortunately there is an expectation that when disaster strikes someone’s going to step in.” Governments feel powerless to not intervene when a disaster strikes, she says. Even when land is deemed to have a limited life span because of erosion or flood risk – values don’t plummet, she says. “Everyone assumes that it plummets, what’s surprising about this, and this is partly why I think we need to intervene, is that we are really good at ignoring risks.” Lisa Ellis, professor of philosophy at the University of Otago, told Nine to Noon she agrees with the leasehold idea. “I love this idea of moving from freehold to leasehold because the fact of the matter is in the face of climate change we are not in fact relating to each other as independent freeholders at all. “We are facing these problems together, we rely on councils and central government for infrastructure.” The kind of transparency offered by leasehold would discourage risky developments, she says. “Right now people who are considering doing new developments in risky areas they are basically playing chicken with the rate payers and the tax payers, expecting that the lovely history of solidaristic support that New Zealand has will bail them out.” 11) NZ's first electric powered aircraft popular in Kapiti - With the future of the Kāpiti Coast Airport up in the air and the Climate Change Commission's recent report on its 2022-2025 emissions reduction plan including some electrification of short haul domestic air travel in the demonstration path from 2030 onwards, the visit is hoped to help kickstart New Zealand's electric aviation revolution. The Pipistrel Alpha Electro aircraft Rerenga Hiko ('Flying Electric') arrived disassembled in Kāpiti on Friday, June 11 and has been fully booked by aero club members around the lower North Island and public passenger flights since its arrival. At a Future of Flying event last Friday, Kāpiti Districts Aero Club president Tony Quayle said, "While this is the end of the aircraft's first trial at Kāpiti, it is only the beginning of electric aviation locally. Designed as a training aircraft, the lithium batteries last up to 90 minutes, and can be charged in under an hour. With no petrol required and the only liquid in the aircraft being a coolant for the motor, the aircraft costs just $75 an hour to operate. "We are able to operate this aircraft at $75 an hour, whereas a Cessna 152, our standard training aircraft, is $200 an hour. "There is a dramatic difference in cost in flying this aircraft." Brought to New Zealand by ElectricAir owner Gary Freedman after finding he couldn't reconcile driving an electric car but flying in a petrol aircraft, Gary has found interest in the aircraft has been huge. With Aotearoa having one of the highest rates of short haul flights in the world per capita and goals of achieving a 100 per cent renewable electricity grid, ElectricAir sees electric aviation as a no-brainer for New Zealand. The full article can be viewed here - 12) Sounds Air plan to fly electric plane by 2026 - Electric commercial passenger aircraft could be landing at an airport near you within five years. Electric aircraft will offer a smoother, quieter ride, with a smaller carbon footprint, and airfares are expected to cost the same as on a comparable gas turbine engine aircraft. In its final advice to the Government on Aotearoa's roadmap to reducing carbon emissions, the Climate Change Commission said short-haul aviation, such as a trip from Wellington to Nelson, will begin converting to electric aircraft from 2030. Marlborough-based regional airline Sounds Air has even more ambitious plans, with a goal of flying electric passenger aircraft on regional routes by 2026. To read the full press release, click here. Below is an extract from the Sounds Air website and here is a recent statement from Sounds Air about the development - In line with Sounds Air's goal to become the first New Zealand airline to offer zero-emission flights, attached is a 'Press Release from Heart Aerospace' dated 13th July 2021. This is a huge development milestone in the goal of achieving Zero Emission flights world-wide, and in New Zealand. Sounds Air is very excited to be part of this world leading technology and the order for 200 ES-19’s by United Airlines cements the future of this project. It is so easy to say "too hard" or "not in my lifetime" but Sounds Air says "if not us - then who"? As a board and company we are dedicated to being at the forefront of this technology in New Zealand and wish Heart Aerospace all success as they lead the way towards Zero Emission flight. 13) Report finds biogas a viable alternative for New Zealand - This country has the potential to produce enough renewable gas to supply three quarters of all commercial users, writes Nicholas Pointon. A part-government funded report from the country's biggest gas distributor, First Gas, engineering firm Beca, and Fonterra, found that 4 percent of the country's energy related emissions could be avoided by low-emitting, renewable alternatives. One avenue being pursued is anaerobic digestion, whereby organic waste from kitchens and the farm is broken down and turned into biogas, which is then cleaned and upgraded into biomethane. This gas could then be easily transported within the current gas pipeline network, without the need for changes to the infrastructure. Beca's industrial sustainability lead, Eleanor Grant, said widespread use of biomethane would have significant environmental benefits. The full article can be viewed here - 14) The Anthropocene: Where on Earth are we Going? Will Steffen is a well respected scientist based at the Australian National University in Canberra. His research interests span a broad range within the fields of climate and Earth System science, with an emphasis on incorporation of human processes in Earth System modelling and analysis; and on sustainability and climate change, with a focus on urban systems. The Royal Society of Victoria recently released a video with Will speaking frankly about the challenges associated with the climate crisis that humanity are facing. I highly recommend you putting aside the 42 minutes required to listen to it. The video is available here - Here is the preamble to the video - Human pressures on the planet as a whole – the ‘Earth System’ – have now become so great that scientists have proposed that we have left the Holocene, the 11,700-year geologic epoch that has been humanity’s accommodating home, and have entered a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, characterised by extremely rapid changes to the climate system driven primarily by human emissions of greenhouse gases and growing degradation of the planet’s biosphere, driven by a range of direct and indirect human pressures. Where is the Anthropocene headed? The current trajectory of the Earth System is a rapid exit from the Holocene, accelerating towards a much hotter climate system and a degraded, ill-functioning biosphere. Perhaps most concerning is a possible ‘fork in the road’ beyond which lies ‘Hothouse Earth’. The key element of this trajectory is a ‘tipping cascade’, in which a series of interlinked tipping points – the melting of polar ice, the conversion of forest biomes to grasslands or savannas, changes in ocean and atmospheric circulation – take control of the trajectory of the Earth System and move it to a much hotter, biodiversity-impoverished, but stable state. Professor Will Steffen (Climate Council of Australia, Australian National University) argues that avoiding this possible tipping cascade requires fundamental changes to human societies. These changes include not only advances in technologies but also more fundamental changes in societal structures and core values. And here is a quote on the topic from the book “The Systems View of Life” by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi. “...Our world today is dominated by a global economic system with disastrous social and environmental impacts – ‘predatory capitalism’…. We are the only species on Earth who destroys its own habitat, threatening countless other species with extinction in the process.” 15) Aboriginal Wisdom shared - The previous item asking "Where on Earth are we going" and this item are strongly linked. I grew up in West Australia from the age of 3 until I left as an 18 year old. My early schooling was in a small country town in the wheatbelt called Pingelly where there was a large reserve on the edge of town where the local Noongar people lived. Noongar people are the traditional owners of the south west region of WA, but in our town were banished to the "Reserve". I knew the road that went to the "Reserve" but never went down that road. A white person couldn't go there without a permit. We would all do well to listen to the simple but profound wisdom being shared by the aboriginal people. Humanity must rediscover it's "connection to Country" as they call it. Here is a quote from a Noongar elder published in the book, “Elders: Wisdom from Australia’s Indigenous Leaders.” "We’re only here for a short amount of time to do what we’ve been put here to do, which is to look after the country. We’re only a tool in the cycle of things. ...(we) go out into the world and help keep the balance of nature. It’s a big cycle of living with the land, and then eventually going back to it…” Here is a short 15 minute video clip with Marlikka Perdrisat giving her keynote address on "Country" to the recent Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Summit in Adelaide. Her presence is powerful and her message moving. Here is a brief bio - Marlikka Perdrisat is a Nyikina Warrwa and Wangkumara Barkindji woman and has attained her Bachelor of Commerce, completing her Juris Doctor in Law, with the promise of starting her Postgraduate Doctorate in 2022. Marlikka works across academia, film, and law to spread awareness of First Law, the guiding principles that First Peoples generated over aeons to govern the diverse bioregions within the land mass currently known as Australia. Marlikka has been employed for the past four years with Gilbert + Tobin an award-winning Australian law firm, she is currently on secondment to the Environmental Defenders Office. Marlikka is also a digital storyteller and researcher with the Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council, an alliance of Traditional Owners who have come together to stand with One Mind and One Voice as a united Council of Senior Elders from Traditional Owner Groups of the King Sound, Fitzroy River, and its Catchment. 16) Proposed Legal Definition of Ecocide released by Stop Ecocide Foundation - The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide convened by our foundation has completed its deliberations. The proposed definition of ecocide as a 5th crime under the Rome Statute is now available for states to consider - and for civil society to demand. We think the drafting panel has achieved something remarkable - we love this legal definition! It’s well pitched between what needs to be done to protect ecosystems and what will be acceptable to states - it’s both bold and workable at same time. Governments and activists alike will take it seriously. Here is a copy of the draft definition of Ecocide. 1. For the purpose of this Statute, “ecocide” means 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. 2. For the purpose of paragraph 1: a. “Wanton” means with reckless disregard for damage which would be clearly excessive in relation to the social and economic benefits anticipated; b. “Severe” means damage which involves very serious adverse changes, disruption or harm to any element of the environment, including grave impacts on human life or natural, cultural or economic resources; c. “Widespread” means damage which extends beyond a limited geographic area, crosses state boundaries, or is suffered by an entire ecosystem or species or a large number of human beings; d. “Long-term” means damage which is irreversible or which cannot be redressed through natural recovery within a reasonable period of time; e. “Environment” means the earth, its biosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, as well as outer space. This is a very encouraging development after a lot of effort from many people. Hopefully this draft is adopted and the people of our planet get the opportunity to hold to account those who do serious and long lasting damage to the environment that all life depends on for survival. You can read more about this on the Ecocide Law website here - 17) The upcoming moon wobble and what we can expect - I found this item from RNZ recently very interesting. Research shows that the regular moon "wobble" will exacerbate sea level rise impacts for a period of about 18 years after 2035. A new study on high tides and flooding in the US made headlines this past week. But rather than blaming the usual villain, climate change, coverage of the study instead pointed the finger at the Moon - the study has mentioned a "wobble" in the moon's orbit that could have a significant impact on the number of natural disasters the world faces. The Moon wobble is a regular occurrence climate scientist Professor David Noone told Jesse Mulligan.“The idea of the wobble is not that the moon itself actually wobbles, but the way in which the moon influences and affects our tides that changes with time,” Prof Noone says. It’s part of a regular cycle that happens every 18 to 19 years, he says. “On that 18-year cycle there are times when the high tides and low tides are much more different from one another. “And there are other times in that cycle where the high tides and low tides are quite similar so the magnitude of the tides are large or small.” We are currently on a downward trend, he says. “The difference between our high tides and low tides, it's actually quite large at the moment. So, we're headed into a period where the difference between a high tides and low tides will be more modest.” What the researchers at the University of Hawaii have done is connect this natural phenomenon and seas level rise, he says. “The idea there is quite simple that if sea level is slowly but surely rising, and then on top of that the high tides are particularly high. They're the moments when we would expect coastal flooding to be most likely.” Because we are going into a phase of decreasing high tides at the moment, it almost exactly offsets the increase in tidal height overall by sea level rise, Prof Noone says. “What's really quite problematic that this new research has pointed out is that after about 2035, these two effects sea level rise and the now increasing rates of high tides will combine and we get a double whammy. “The higher tides are increasing, as well as the tides overall are increasing because of sea level rise. And we see a dramatic change in the likelihood of flooding because of that combination.” You can listen to the full interview here - 18) World ‘must step up preparations for extreme heat’ - The world needs to step up preparations for extreme heat, which may be hitting faster and harder than previously forecast, a group of leading climate scientists have warned in the wake of freakishly high temperatures in Canada and the US. Last week’s heat dome above British Columbia, Washington state and Portland, Oregon smashed daily temperature records by more than 5C (9F) in some places – a spike that would have been considered impossible two weeks ago, the experts said, prompting concerns the climate may have crossed a dangerous threshold. “We thought we knew what was going on … Then this heatwave came which was way above the upper bound. With the knowledge of last year this was impossible. This was surprising and shaking,” he said. “We are now much less certain about heatwaves than we were two weeks ago. We are very worried about the possibility of this happening everywhere but we just don’t know yet.” The full article can be viewed here - 19) Climate Reality Check 2020.I had an item in the March newsletter earlier this year about the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration based in Australia. They have now set up a website called CLIMATE REALITY CHECK which has some very good information and resource material available on it. Climate Reality Check 2020 draws together current climate research from around the world to present 20 critical observations, insights and understandings to help inform and guide the stark choices that now stand before us. Here are a couple of quotes from scientists who have endorsed the Climate Reality Check information. “If we continue down the present path "there is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow but we will destroy almost everything we have built up over the last two thousand years.” PROF. HANS JOACHIM SCHELLNHUBER. DIRECTOR EMERITUS OF THE POTSDAM INSTITUTE. “Ten years ago, this Climate Reality Check report would have been seen as alarmist. The fact that it would now be seen as a reasonable statement of the current situation should be a wake up call for all the Nero’s watching as Rome burns. The Climate Reality Check brings together multiple lines of evidence that together point at a Climate Emergency. A significant part of an appropriate response to this emergency is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, not as soon as convenient”. Professor A.J. Pitman. Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, The University of New South Wales, Sydney. Recognise the Impact | Recalculate the Risk | Reframe the Action Climate Reality Check draws together current climate science research to present 20 critical understandings, observations and insights to help inform and guide the stark choices that now stand before us. Climate Reality Check is a resource designed to help climate practitioners, advocates, journalists, business leaders and policymakers better understand and address the alarming mismatch between the current climate risks and considerably inadequate level of climate action. The underestimation of the seriousness of the climate reality today poses grave consequences for the safety, health and well-being of our societies, the capacity of governments to protect the people, and regional and global stability. SUMMARY • Presents a sound scientific foundation to increase vital awareness and help frame effective strategy. • Highlights major trends and impacts to emphasise urgent and severe vulnerabilities. • Confronts risks and threats with rigour and unrestrained honesty. • Identifies critical action gaps essential for global security and protection. The full report is available to download or view online here - 20) UK failing to protect against climate dangers, advisers warn. The UK government is failing to protect people from the fast-rising risks of the climate crisis, from deadly heatwaves to power blackouts, its official climate advisers have warned. The climate change committee said action to improve the nation’s resilience is not keeping pace with the impacts of global heating, many of which are already causing harm. The CCC’s experts said they were frustrated by the “absolutely illogical” lack of sufficient action on adaptation, particularly as acting is up to 10 times more cost-effective than not doing so. They said climate change was here now. In 2020’s heatwave, 2,500 people died in the UK, but the CCC said the government had not heeded their warnings for more than a decade that homes must be made easier to cool, such as by using shutters. Cutting carbon emissions remained vital to avoid the worst climate impacts, the CCC said, but some were inevitable. It highlighted a series of risks that required action within two years at the latest. These included damage to woodlands and peatlands by high temperatures and drought that would prevent the UK meeting its goal of net zero emissions by 2050, because these areas would be unable to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The full article is available here - 21) Joint NASA, NOAA Study Finds Earth's Energy Imbalance Has Doubled. Researchers have found that Earth’s energy imbalance approximately doubled during the 14-year period from 2005 to 2019. Earth's climate is determined by a delicate balance between how much of the Sun's radiative energy is absorbed in the atmosphere and at the surface and how much thermal infrared radiation Earth emits to space. A positive energy imbalance means the Earth system is gaining energy, causing the planet to heat up. The doubling of the energy imbalance is the topic of a recent study, the results of which were published June 15 in Geophysical Research Letters. The full article can be found here - 22) Carbon Fee and Dividend support - The famous climate scientist James Hansen has been a strong proponent of the Carbon Fee and Dividend approach to carbon management. He recently posted this item. Fareed Zakaria is a presenter from CNN. "Fareed Zakaria attracts high level guests to his program because of its reach and objectivity. He lets his guests have the last word on their topic. Yet Zakaria’s interpretations of issues of the day – which he labels as “his take” – stand out as especially penetrating and insightful. On Sunday this week Zakaria ended his program with a concise description of an effective approach to address climate change – in just a few minutes he described how carbon fee-and-dividend could be made near-global. I won’t try to summarize his take – it’s impossible to match his clarity and brevity, which includes great illustrations. In contrast to carbon fee-and-dividend, most governments prefer the “red-tape” approach: increased government regulations with the government picking technology winners and losers. Governments have followed the red tape approach for three decades, ever since the Framework Convention on Climate Change was approved by almost all nations in 1992. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement are designed to allow all nations to follow the red tape approach within their countries. As a result, global carbon emissions have continued to rise. The red tape approach cannot work because it ignores economics. It lets the fossil fuel industry continue to use the atmosphere – somewhere – as a free dumping ground for carbon waste. Fossil fuels might be regulated away in some nations, but the fuels will be burned elsewhere. Fossil fuels are amazingly effective in raising living standards; one gallon (3.7 liters) of gasoline (petrol) contains the work equivalent of 400 hours of labor by a healthy adult. That beneficial property of fossil fuels – we now realize – carries with it an existential threat. Continued carbon emissions will make low latitudes of Earth uncomfortable if not uninhabitable. Coastal cities worldwide will begin to go underwater during the lifetime of today’s young people. Emigration pressures from low latitudes and coastal regions may make the planet ungovernable, and autocratic governments will be more likely to gain and retain power." The full statement by Fareed can be viewed here - The full release from James Hansen can be downloaded here - It is available under the heading “Public Square – Global Problems require a Global Solution.” posted on June 24th. 23) Bottom Trawling and carbon dioxide - New science shows that bottom trawling is not only extremely damaging to ocean biodiversity but it also releases more carbon dioxide than global aviation (at pre-Covid levels) It’s been well established by now that the agricultural systems producing our food contribute at least one fifth of global anthropogenic carbon emissions—and up to a third if waste and transportation are factored in. A troubling new report points to a previously overlooked source: an industrial fishing process practiced by dozens of countries around the world, including the United States, China, and the E.U. The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, is the first to calculate the carbon cost of bottom trawling, in which fishing fleets drag immense weighted nets along the ocean floor, scraping up fish, shellfish and crustaceans along with significant portions of their habitats. According to calculations conducted by the report’s 26 authors, bottom trawling is responsible for one gigaton of carbon emissions a year—a higher annual total than (pre-pandemic) aviation emissions. Not only does the practice contribute to climate change, it is extremely damaging to ocean biodiversity—the “equivalent of ploughing an old-growth forest into the ground, over and over and over again until there is nothing left” according to lead author Enric Sala, a marine biologist who is also National Geographic’s Explorer in Residence. The full article can be viewed here - 24) Mining holds the key to a green future – no wonder human rights activists are worried - The extract below is from an article written by Kevin Watkins who is chief executive of Save the Children UK and highlights one of the issues we all need to face as we try to decarbonise. For me it also highlights the fact that we can't keep consuming unhindered on the assumption that the energy required to feed our addiction can be replaced from renewable sources. The question has to be asked "can we reduce our consumption and effectively manage a program of energy descent to save our planet?" "Can we decarbonise power and transport in time to avoid climate catastrophe? That will depend partly on the governance of a global mining sector tarnished by accusations of human rights abuse, environmental damage and financial corruption. Expanding renewable energy is a mineral intensive enterprise. Nature might provide the solar radiation and wind providing renewable energy, but the arteries through which the electricity flows are made of copper – and lots of it. Wind turbine gearboxes need manganese, platinum and rare earth magnets. EV batteries are made with lithium, cobalt and nickel. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a mid-century zero-carbon world will take a sixfold increase in the production of these and other transition minerals by 2030. Prices are already surging. The supply chains through which transition minerals flow are highly concentrated. Small groups of countries – the Democratic Republic of the Congo (cobalt), Indonesia and the Philippines (nickel), Australia and Chile (lithium) – dominate production. But Chinese mining companies are rapidly increasing investments. In processing, China is the main game in town. Its refining companies account for more than half of the world’s cobalt and lithium production. Global value chains for EV batteries are dominated from top to bottom by Chinese suppliers. They account for more than 80% of the raw materials for advanced battery materials. Cop26 provides an opportunity for the EU, US and China to forge a new multilateralism. The starting point should be a shift towards mandatory human rights due diligence reporting. The EU has already announced an intent to move in this direction, potentially opening the door to sanctions against companies for breach of due diligence and legal redress for communities. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is similarly planning to make environmental and human rights disclosures mandatory. None of this is a substitute for effective national governance. But mandatory human rights reporting, allied to strengthened disclosure on shell companies and ownership of offshore enterprises, would help raise reporting standards and strengthen the hands of local communities and others defending human rights. The alternative is a wave of activist protest, legal challenge and investor hesitancy that will slow the development of the mineral resources needed to secure our climate future. That is an outcome none of us can afford. With the right governance we can ensure that the green revolution in energy does not become a new resource curse for the poor – without it, we all lose. The full article can be viewed here - 25) Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price - After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes. An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way. Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern states watching “mega-rains” destroy crops and homes, and fishing communities losing catches to warming waters, are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels. But, even more strikingly, the nearly two dozen lawsuits are underpinned by accusations that the industry severely aggravated the environmental crisis with a decades-long campaign of lies and deceit to suppress warnings from their own scientists about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate and dupe the American public. The full article can be viewed here - 26) How to Live in a Climate ‘Permanent Emergency’ - This is a very interesting article written by David Wallace-Wells looking at the Permanent Emergency that is now happening around us and the challenges of adaptation arising from the emergency. Here’s an extract from the article. Simply because tens of millions of people in Canada and the U.S. are living through the heat dome, however many thousands die from it, and will survive the fire season to come, however much they choke on its smoke, it would be criminal to look back on what is happening now and will happen in the months ahead and think, “We managed.” For years now, hyperbolic headliners have used those kinds of disasters of warming to declare that the age of climate change had arrived. This year suggests the possibility of a new arrival — the age of adaptation, or what climate-and-energy researcher Juan Moreno-Cruz yesterday called “climate realism.” Alarmism, he said, was “useless,” and even efforts to decarbonize have served as a kind of distraction. “Stop dreaming up climate solutions, think of climate managing strategies,” he admonished.” “Talking climate solutions has left us unprepared for actual climate change. We keep running models and fighting over which “solution” is the best, but we have done nothing to address the impacts of climate change. Managing climate change is not as sexy as solving climate change, but it’s what we need. Yes, we need real action to achieve deep decarbonization in our economy. There is no amount of adaptation we can do if we don‘t get emissions under control. But we already baked in so much warming we need to deal with it now. We painted ourselves into this corner, and we need to navigate our way out of it. Dreaming about a future carbon-free system will do nothing for people in India and Pakistan today.” The full article is available here - That's it for this newsletter. Nga mihi nui, Budyong. Here is a mid-year newsletter with plenty of material if you have a wet day and want to browse. You may find one or two items of interest for you? 1) Marlborough District Council Long Term Plan 2021 - 2031 - CKM made a submission to the LTP and also took the opportunity to speak at the LTP Hearings. Councillors were attentive and respectful and our input seemed to be well received. You can view the submission and the presentation made at the LTP Hearings session here - 2) NIWA Report presented to MDC councillors and staff - This report on Climate Change projections and impacts for Marlborough was prepared for Council by NIWA (NIWA report 2121031WN) in order to inform Council of areas where Climate change impacts may require further investigation and actions. The report summarises likely changes in temperature, rainfall, drought, and sea level rise in the Marlborough District over the remainder of this century, and discusses the probable impacts of these changes on river flows, droughts, forestry, horticulture, and ecosystem and human health. It was presented to the Environment Committee by Gregor Macara on April 22nd, 2021. It's well worth looking at just to see the the Executive Summary. Drought potential is projected to increase across Marlborough, with annual accumulated Potential Evapotranspiration Deficit (PED) totals increasing with time and increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. By 2040, PED totals are projected to increase by 50-150 mm. By 2090, PED totals are projected to increase by 50-200 mm (medium concentration pathway) or 75-250 mm (high concentration pathway). Another significant projection is that mean annual low flow (MALF) magnitudes are expected to decrease across both greenhouse gas concentration pathways and future time periods for most catchments. A decrease in MALF is expected to exceed 50% for most of the river systems in the region with increased greenhouse gas concentration and time. The full pdf file can be downloaded here - 3) Gravel Bed Rivers National Project Update to Council - A declining trend in Wairau Aquifer levels has been observed at western Wairau Plain MDC monitor wells since 1973, which pre-dates the Marlborough wine industry. While the declining trend of around 1 metre over 50 years may not appear large at an average of 20 mm/year, the risk is if it continues over the very long-term, groundwater springs may dry up and ultimately there could be seawater intrusion of our coastal aquifers. Given the depleted storage volume of the Wairau Aquifer after a series of dry summers since 2014 and minor Wairau River activity through the past winter recharge period, current levels of consented abstraction are also compounding the issue. Identifying the drivers via the Gravel Bed Rivers Project (GBR) is a priority project for MDC, given the longer term regional scale implications for flood control, reliability of consented water consents, wetland health and security of coastal groundwater supply. The causes of the decline are known to be incremental and long-acting. These drivers have been actively investigated over the past decade, but research is challenging because most of what goes on is hidden beneath the surface with measurements often indirect in nature. This is very interesting research for anyone concerned about the future reliability of water supplied from the Wairau Aquifer, as the impacts projected in the NIWA report take effect in the next few decades. You can see the original report to the MDC Environment Committee from June 2020 on the MDC website here (Agenda item 5) and the update is available from the April 2nd, 2021 Environment Committee meeting here (Agenda item 4) 4) Another Stuff article from Tom - Tom has just had another article printed in the local paper and on Stuff. The latest one is titled "Have you heard about the Climate Emergency?". It's well worth a read if you haven't already seen it. You can check it out here - 5) Does Petroleum Industry Spying Really Matter? Some of you will know Dr Terrence Loomis who was a CKM member until recently before moving back to the Gisborne area. He recently had an Opinion piece printed on the Scoop website of which there is an extract below. Nicky Hager’s latest revelations about security firm Thompson and Clark’s ‘spying’ on climate activists and environmental organisations on behalf of the oil and gas industry and big GHG emitters makes entertaining reading. But it does beg the question “So what?” After all, most of this was already known from media coverage and academic research. Certainly environmental groups knew they were being watched and their communications monitored. Responses to Hager’s report seem to suggest this kind of clandestine information gathering was repugnant, immoral, even dangerous because the spies were photographing school children. Or because petroleum companies used it to thwart protest actions. It IS about the exercise of power, I’ll grant you that. The real reason such practices are dangerous and deserve exposure is what petroleum companies and PEPANZ actually do with the information besides preventing disruption to their conferences and business operations. You can read the full Opinion piece here - 6) Our food is an existential threat beyond climate change - This article was written by Jack Santa Barbara from Tasman who is a active member of the Nelson/Tasman Climate Forum. Studies show our food system is unsustainable; it will not endure. We will only embrace the solutions if we first recognise the serious dilemma we have created with our economic success. The Climate Change Commission has received over 15,000 replies to its Draft Advice Report regarding how NZ can deal with climate change. This level of response bodes well for how many of us are engaged with this important issue. But what about all the other existential threats that we continue to face which are not getting attention? In point of fact, there is not a single mainstream human designed system we rely on daily that is sustainable. If something is unsustainable it means it will not last. If none of the systems we rely on daily are sustainable, what are the implications for our wellbeing if they cannot endure? Take our most basic energy needs – food production. It takes more energy to produce our food than the food provides. Think about that for a moment. Our food system is unsustainable; it will not endure. This conclusion was reached by both a United Nations study, and another by the World Business Council for Social Development. The full article is available here - 7) Food and Fossil Fuels - The fossil fuels required to grow, harvest, process, and distribute food makes up a significant part of the food Footprint. Although it wasn’t always the case, today we are firmly in the age of fossil fuel. The fossil fuels used to grow our food are invisible when we are enjoying our meals, which is why we use infographics to reveal how much fuel it takes to provide the food on our plates. They depict how many calories of fossil fuel are used, from farm to store, for every calorie of food we consume. This does not include the additional energy required to transport the food from the store nor to power your lights, stove, refrigerator, or dishwasher at home. Fossil fuels are everywhere, and they are one of the main reasons that humanity is in ecological overshoot. In industrial agriculture, crops are dependent on large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers, petroleum-based agricultural chemicals, pumps that run irrigation, diesel for machinery, and oil for food distribution across the world. The green revolution focused on creating exponentially higher crop yields with decreased dependency on human labor, but it also boosted our food system’s dependence on fossil fuels. While our food system can provide more food, it is now more dependent than ever on finite resources and inexpensive fossil fuel energy. It is no wonder that, in many cases, our food is embedded with more “fossil fuel calories” than nutritional calories. For example, in Slovenia it takes 7 calories of fossil fuel to provide every 1 calorie of meat consumed. The number of calories of fossil fuel required varies by food group and among countries. What does moving away from fossil fuel-dependent agriculture mean for us? It starts with recognizing that we cannot take our current situation for granted. Our current food and resource security is heavily subsidized by cheap and versatile fossil fuel, which has a “shelf life” that is about to expire. We can take our future into our own hands. With our forks. We can choose what food we’ll eat and the types of agriculture we’ll support. Together we can opt for a future where those who feed us are fairly compensated for their work, including the work of protecting and maintaining nature’s regenerative power. You can read the full article and see the comparison between different countries here - Unfortunately NZ is not one of the countries included on the list but it is still very interesting to check it out. 8) Better Futures Forum (BFF) Climate Commission submission. I was very impressed with the BFF submission to the Climate Commission and highly recommend reading it. In their Overview they state - "The impression we have from the advice report is that the Climate Change Commission is proposing a more or less ‘business as usual’ scenario, in which we simply replace our vehicle fleet with electric vehicles, use a bit more public and active transport, reduce the number of dairy cows on farms without changes to farming approaches, marginally reduce inorganic waste to landfill and increase carbon stores by planting native trees. None of these ideas are revolutionary, nor transformative. We recognise that they do represent some level of change, that change can be challenging, and that there may be some public and, therefore, political resistance to transformative, systemic change. But the report must avoid contributing to a ‘cooling discourse’ on climate action, described by Sarah Monod de Froideville as communications that “settle concerns about harmful activity that are gathering momentum through acknowledging the harm and appearing to address the activity in some manner...so that harmful activity can continue or resume unopposed.” BFF’s view is that a ‘business as usual’ approach will not ensure our survival; particularly viewed in the context of the wide range of environmental challenges that stem from climate change. Transformative, systemic change is required for humans to continue to survive and thrive on this planet. That message, however difficult to hear, must be communicated: and it is the Commission that must do that." You can access the full submission here - 9) Climate change activists' Mill Rd legal challenge 'a sign of things to come' - Auckland councillor Chris Darby says a legal challenge against the $1.4 billion Mill Road project by climate change advocates All Aboard Aotearoa is a sign of what's to come. The group applied for a judicial review of the Waka Kotahi NZTA-led project in the High Court in Wellington on Thursday. (March 25th) The 21.5km proposed Mill Rd arterial route, which would provide an alternative road between Manukau and Drury, would run parallel to and east of State Highway 1. Construction was expected to start next year and be completed by 2028. The proposed route of the $1.4 billion Mill Rd project. All Aboard Aotearoa is a coalition made up of Generation Zero, Lawyers for Climate Action, Bike Auckland, Women in Urbanism, Movement and Greenpeace and its stated goal is to decarbonise the country's transport by 2030. The group asked the High Court to set aside the decisions to fund and build Mill Rd, arguing it undermines the Crown’s commitments under the Paris Agreement and Zero Carbon Act, and because the Government and Waka Kotahi did not properly consider the greenhouse gas emissions impacts of the project. “Allowing the status quo – climate inaction - is in fact direct action towards an unsustainable future in which our children face severe environmental degradation and exponentially rising costs,” said Jenny Cooper of Lawyers for Climate Action. You can read two articles about the "All Aboard Aotearoa" group action here and here - This project has now been dropped by the government, as of June 4th. More info here - 10) Some more myths busted about pollution associated with construction and operation of EV's compared to ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) vehicles - This animated video produced by Mark Linthicum is very informative and at times quite funny. It illustrates how much energy is required for the drilling, pumping and transport of oil. It gives you the exact figures of how wasteful it is to make petrol cars. In the US, there are an estimated 435,000 oil wells that use pump jacks. The estimated energy for these wells is 4300 GWh each month. That's a lot of energy to only extract the oil out of the ground. If you were to use this electricity to power electric cars directly, you could power 15 million electric cars for a month. What about lithium mining? The video highlights that Australia is the number one mining country in the world. Australia’s concern is with oil mining that pollutes and causes more damage to the planet than any lithium mining that takes place. You can see the YouTube video here - 11) Australian government refuses to address future liquid fuel risks - This article looks at the unsustainability of the Australian oil-fuelled transportation system. It identifies major impacts to the Australian economy from inadequate recognition of the challenges arising from the transition away from fossil fuels. The Commonwealth Government is planning to spend $90 billion on submarines. Submarines that may never be used in conflict, and in the event of a major war, are unlikely to change the outcome. Yet only a measly $200 million is allocated for something as important as powering/fuelling the nation’s future transportation system which we all depend upon every day in perpetuity. Clearly, there is an issue with the Government’s priorities. The Commonwealth Government has recently released a Discussion Paper on its Future Fuels Strategy. It is perhaps reasonable to expect that such a strategy may seek to reduce Australia’s oil consumption, improve fuel security and reduce emissions in a timely fashion. The current strategy, even if successful in meeting the vague and ill-defined objectives contained therein, is unlikely to achieve any of these imperatives. Two words can describe the proposed strategy: woefully inadequate! It is now apparent, based on the Future Fuels Strategy and other documents such as the Interim Liquid Fuels Security Report, that the Commonwealth Government has little understanding of the liquid fuel predicament that Australia faces. A predicament perhaps best described by Dr Simon Michaux: “We think we are going to replace a complex industrial ecosystem that took more than a century to build with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known (oil) in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit, and unlimited mineral resources. At a time when we have very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt, not enough minerals, and an unprecedented human population, embedded in a deteriorating environment.” The full article can be viewed here - 12) Heat slows down plants - The implications for reduced carbon sequestration from growing trees highlighted in this article are sobering. The results are a wake-up call, says one of the study’s authors, University of Waikato soil scientist Louis Schipper. “The biosphere has been harvesting our emitted CO2 and we assumed that would carry on. But this data shows the size of this terrestrial carbon sink will go down. It blows me away how near this is.” Add to this the increasing risk of wildfire and drought, and stressed plants’ lessened resilience to pathogens, and it’s clear, says Schipper, that we can’t count on “this idea of just planting trees”. Plants are our best technology for soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but a new study shows the world’s forests and grasslands could flip over to become a source rather than a sink of CO2. Currently, the world’s green spaces absorb about a third of the emissions we produce by burning fossil fuels. But at the current rate of warming, plants’ ability to inhale more carbon dioxide than they exhale will slow down, then reverse, shrinking the carbon sink to almost half its size by as early as 2040. A study published in Science Advances in January looked at the link between temperature and photosynthesis (the process plants use to turn carbon dioxide and the sun’s energy into oxygen and sugars for their growth) and respiration (which releases carbon dioxide). Researchers analysed datasets from a global network of meteorological sensors known as FLUXNET, which tracks a suite of atmospheric variables, including carbon fluxes above different biomes. The study found that photosynthesis has a much lower ideal temperature, between 18°C and 28°C depending on the type of plant, than respiration, which means that as global temperatures continue to climb, photosynthesis will slow while respiration keeps rising. Some ecosystems in warmer parts of the world, including the Amazon, already reach this threshold during certain times of the year. Earlier studies on specific trees suggested that some would grow faster at higher atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, but this wider study found no such effect. Nor did it find any evidence that plants adjust to perform higher rates of photosynthesis at higher temperatures. The Science Advances study can be viewed here - And the full NZ Geographic article can be viewed here - 13) New battery technology for large scale renewable energy storage - I’m very interested in new battery technologies. This video looks at the liquid metal battery which appears to have great potential for large scale storage for renewable energy production from wind farm and solar farms. They are very efficient and can cycle thousands of times and still retain over 99% efficiency. Also component parts are all readily recyclable. You can watch the YouTube video here - 14) Some home truths about why divestment pays- In a few months, a small British financial think tank will mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of a landmark research report that helped launch the global fossil-fuel-divestment movement. As that celebration takes place, another seminal report—this one obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the world’s largest investment house—closes the loop on one of the key arguments of that decade-long fight. It definitively shows that the firms that joined that divestment effort have profited not only morally but also financially. The original report, from the London-based Carbon Tracker Initiative, found something stark: the world’s fossil-fuel companies had five times more carbon in their reserves than scientists thought we could burn and stay within any sane temperature target. The numbers meant that, if those companies carried out their business plans, the planet would overheat “Any investment fund looking to protect itself against losses from coal, oil, and gas companies now has the largest investment house in the world showing them why, how, and when to protect themselves, the economy, and the planet.” In short, the financial debate about divestment is as settled as the ethical one—you shouldn’t try to profit off the end of the world and, in any event, you won’t. What would happen if the world’s largest investment firm issued that advice and its clients followed it? Fifteen trillion dollars plus twenty-five trillion is a lot of money. It’s roughly twice the size of the current U.S. economy. It’s almost half the size of the total world economy. It would show that a report issued by a small London think tank a decade ago had turned the financial world’s view of climate upside down. The full article is available here - 15) Chasing Carbon Unicorns - According to a new report, net zero targets many governments are pursuing are distractions from the urgent need to drastically reduce carbon emissions. Net zero targets rest on carbon capture and storage technologies. These technologies include direct air capture, bioenergy capture, mineralization, and enhanced weathering. But net zero targets described by NDCs and businesses are “deceptions” and “distractions,” according to a new report by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI). “Net zero is a trick because the assumption is that you can emit carbon so long as you have some solution to sequester the carbon,” said Meena Raman, legal adviser and senior researcher at the Third World Network (TWN). “Corporations, especially those in the Global North that are already making billions off the climate crisis, get to take cover under ‘net zero’ to continue polluting,” added Jaron Browne, organizing director at the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ). A recent, unrelated commentary published in Nature supports the same conclusions: “Sometimes the [net zero] targets do not aim to reduce emissions, but compensate for them with offsets.” A foundational fallacy in net zero targets, the FoEI report claims, rests in a misrepresentation of the carbon cycle. The carbon cycle can be divided into two parts based on timescale. One is the biogenic cycle, in which carbon circulates between the atmosphere, land, and oceans. The other is the slower, nonbiogenic cycle in which carbon circulates between fossil fuels stored underground and the atmosphere. The biogenic cycle can occur within hours, days, and years. The nonbiogenic cycle takes hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. Net zero targets conflate the two cycles, the FoEI report claims. Targets assume all the carbon that’s already circulating in the atmosphere as well as all the carbon that will be emitted by fossil fuels can be safely and effectively sequestered. In other words, carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from fossil fuel use is in addition to “the carbon that is already cycling between the active pools. We are putting significant stress on all these pools by pushing them to take up additional fossil CO2.…We cannot just stuff the geosphere (i.e., CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels) into the biosphere,” the report says. The FoEI report notes misrepresentations of science and technology, as well as the prominent presence of politics in determining net zero targets. It also identifies fundamental questions about whether such technologies can actually be developed at the required scale, identifying them as “carbon unicorns, fanciful imaginings of how we might solve the climate crisis without needing to eliminate the burning of fossil fuels” while warning that there are “no saviour ecosystems around the planet, nor fairy godmother technologies, that will suck up continued fossil fuel emissions.” Check out the full article here - 16) Is ammonia a way to store hydrogen instead of storing it in it's pure H2 form. Chemical engineers at UNSW Sydney have found a way to make 'green' ammonia from air, water and renewable electricity that does not require the high temperatures, high pressure and huge infrastructure currently needed to produce this essential compound. The new production method -- demonstrated in a laboratory-based proof of concept -- also has the potential to play a role in the global transition towards a hydrogen economy, where ammonia is increasingly seen as a solution to the problem of storing and transporting hydrogen energy. You can read two different articles about this research here and here - 17) A wind turbine with a difference - The giant windfarms that line hills and coastlines are not the only way to harness the power of the wind, say green energy pioneers who plan to reinvent wind power by forgoing the need for turbine towers, blades – and even wind. “We are not against traditional windfarms,” says David Yáñez, the inventor of Vortex Bladeless. His six-person startup, based just outside Madrid, has pioneered a turbine design that can harness energy from winds without the sweeping white blades considered synonymous with wind power. The design recently won the approval of Norway’s state energy company, Equinor, which named Vortex on a list of the 10 most exciting startups in the energy sector. Equinor will also offer the startup development support through its tech accelerator programme. The bladeless turbines stand at 3 metres high, a curve-topped cylinder fixed vertically with an elastic rod. To the untrained eye it appears to waggle back and forth, not unlike a car dashboard toy. In reality, it is designed to oscillate within the wind range and generate electricity from the vibration. The full article is available here - 18) Changes to giant ocean eddies could have ‘devastating effects’ globally. Swirling and meandering ocean currents that help shape the world’s climate have gone through a “global-scale reorganisation” over the past three decades, according to new research. The amount of energy in these ocean currents, which can be from 10km to 100km across and are known as eddies, has increased, having as yet unknown effects on the ocean’s ability to lock-away carbon dioxide and heat from fossil fuel burning. Anchor One expert said the changes described in the research could affect the ability of the Southern Ocean, one of the world’s biggest natural carbon stores, to absorb CO2. You can find the full article here - 19) The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Dalai Lama and 100 other Nobel Prize laureates have signed an open letter calling on world leaders to end the expansion of coal, oil and gas. In it they state - We write today, on the eve of Earth Day 2021 and the Leaders’ Climate Summit, hosted by President Biden, to urge you to act now to avoid a climate catastrophe by stopping the expansion of oil, gas and coal. We welcome President Biden and the US government’s acknowledgement in the Executive Order that “Together, we must listen to science and meet the moment.” Indeed, meeting the moment requires responses to the climate crisis that will define legacies. Qualifications for being on the right side of history are clear. For far too long, governments have lagged, shockingly, behind what science demands and what a growing and powerful people-powered movement knows: urgent action is needed to end the expansions of fossil fuel production; phase out current production; and invest in renewable energy. This is a global initiative to phase out fossil fuels and support a just transition. Climate change, like nuclear weapons, is a major global threat. Bold and immediate action is needed to address the climate emergency. The main cause of the climate emergency is fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas are responsible for almost 80% of all carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution. Phasing out fossil fuel production, and fast-tracking progress towards safer and more cost-effective solutions, will require unprecedented international cooperation in three main areas – non-proliferation, global disarmament and a peaceful, just transition.You can read a copy of their letter here - 20) Cut methane emissions to avert global temperature rise, UN-backed study urges - Methane emissions caused by human activity can be reduced by up to 45 per cent this decade, thus helping to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to a UN-backed report published on Thursday. The Global Methane Assessment outlines the benefits of mitigating methane, a key ingredient in smog, which include preventing some 260,000 premature deaths and 775,000 asthma-related hospital visits annually, as well as 25 million tonnes in crop losses. The study is the work of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), a global partnership of governments and non-State partners, and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). “Cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years and complements necessary efforts to reduce carbon dioxide. The benefits to society, economies, and the environmental are numerous and far outweigh the cost”, said Inger Andersen, the UNEP Executive Director. Methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas, responsible for around 30 per cent of warming since the pre-industrial era. Most human-caused methane emissions come from three sectors: fossil fuels, such as oil and gas processing; landfills and waste; and agriculture, chiefly related to livestock. The full article is available here - 21) May 26th, 2021 was a big day for Big Oil - The environmental movement won so many campaigns against Big Oil companies on Wednesday 26th May, that it may go down in history as one of the most significant days of ending the age of fossil fuels! Here’s a round-up of what has happened:
Though the decision only applies in the Netherlands, it could have wider effects elsewhere. BBC Netherlands correspondent Anna Holligan tweeted that it was a "precedent-setting judgement". A Shell spokesperson said they "fully expect to appeal today's disappointing court decision" and added that they are stepping up efforts to cut emissions.You can read about these actions here, here and here - 22) Latest Sea Level Rise research extrapolating from the historical record - Sea levels will probably rise faster than most climate models predict, according to a new study. In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations scientific body that reports on climate change, said that the global sea-level average would likely rise at least 2.00 feet (0.61 meters) by the year 2100, but no more than 3.61 feet (1.10 m). Those numbers come from models that account for climate change and ocean heating, ongoing greenhouse gas emissions and potential changes in human behavior to prevent more warming. In this new study, researchers examined models of sea level through the lens of historical data. They looked at how fast sea levels rose in the past as Earth warmed and extrapolated to predict sea-level rise forward in time. They found that existing sea-level models tend to lowball sea-level rise when compared with more straightforward extrapolations from the historical record. "This comparison suggests that the likely upper level of sea-level projections in recent IPCC reports would be too low," the researchers wrote in a paper published Feb. 2 in the journal Ocean Science. The full article is available here and the research paper is available here - 23) The climate crisis requires a new culture and politics, not just new tech – Peter Sutoris We are living through what scientists call the Anthropocene, a new geological age during which humans have become the dominant force shaping the natural environment. Many scientists date this new period to the post-second world war economic boom, the “great acceleration”. This rapid increase in our control over the Earth has brought us to the precipice of catastrophic climate change, triggered a mass extinction, disrupted our planet’s nitrogen cycles and acidified its oceans, among other things. Our society has come to believe that technology is the solution. Electricity from renewable sources, energy-efficient buildings, electric vehicles and hydrogen fuels are among the many innovations that we hope will play a decisive role in reducing emissions. Most of the mainstream climate-change models now assume some degree of “negative emissions” in the future, relying on large-scale carbon capture technology, despite the fact that it is far from ready to be implemented. And if all else fails, the story goes, we can geoengineer the Earth. But the problem with this narrative is that it focuses on the symptoms, not the causes of environmental decay. Even if the technologies on which we pin our hopes for the future deliver as expected and do not lead to much collateral damage – both of which are huge assumptions – they will not have fixed our mindsets. This is a crisis of culture and politics, not of science and technology. To believe that we can innovate and engineer ourselves out of this mess is to miss the key lesson of the Anthropocene – that dealing with planetary-scale processes calls for humility, not arrogance. Our civilisation is underpinned by extractivism, a belief that the Earth is ours to exploit, and the nonsensical idea of infinite growth within a finite territory. The full article is available here - 24) Untax labour and tax resource use. To finish off I recommend this short animated video which makes lots of sense to me. Check it our here - Taxing non-renewable resource use instead of human labour is a cure for many problems plaguing the world today. It looks at runaway consumption of scarce materials, pollution and climate change, as well as low wages and unemployment. Kia Ora
It's only 6 weeks since I sent out the last newsletter but I have a range of material I'm accumulating that I think is worthwhile sharing so here is some more reading for those who are interested. Before we get into that material I wanted to let everyone know Earth Day Picnic is again going to be celebrated here in Marlborough after a break last year due to the Covid lockdown. The local event will be held from 10am to 3pm on April 18th at Pollard Park next to the playground. Thanks to Envirohub from Picton who are taking a lead role this time with the organising of the day. So please make a packed lunch and come along with family and friends on the day. There will a range of activities and interests for children. 1) Climate Commission submission extension - The Climate Commission has extended the deadline for submissions to their Report, by 2 weeks to March 28th. If you haven't already done so we encourage you to put in a submission however brief. If you feel uncertain about submitting there are some good guidelines and advice you might find helpful on the Generation Zero website here or you can go direct to the Climate Commission website and make a submission here - CKM has drafted a submission and a copy is available here if you're interested. You may find material in our submission that you can use in your own. Feel free to send us feedback if you wish - info@climatekaranga.org.nz 2) Nelson/Tasman Climate Forum "Climate Action Book" - Tom and I attended the launch of the Climate Action Book in Richmond last month. This has been a huge collaborative effort by the people of Nelson and Tasman and a testament to the commitment of a lot of people from their region. In the introduction to the Book they say "The Nelson Tasman Climate Forum is a large, open group of volunteers dedicated to bringing our communities together to respond to this long emergency and create a positive future for us all. We also try to be a voice for all other elements of the biosphere in this region, seeing ourselves as part of the web of life." The Book has sections on -
3) Open Letter to Boris Johnson - James Hansen has written an open letter to Boris Johnson with a challenge for him to stand up and be counted at the next UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) COP 26 (Conference of the Parties) in Glasgow, hopefully this November. In the covering note to his letter James says - "Young people are fed up – rightfully so. Boris Johnson has a choice. He and the COP can offer soothing ambitions, while continuing business-almost-as usual – in which case global emissions will rebound after Covid and remain high or even grow – and he will be vilified in the streets of Glasgow, London and around the world. Or he can use his emergent humanity to help turn the world onto a different path, one dictated by science. The UK, where the industrial revolution and coal burning began, could now provide the blueprint by which other nations may proceed. The science shows that fossil fuel use will be phased out rapidly via a rising carbon fee with all funds distributed uniformly to the public. The effect is anti-regressive, as most wealthy people have a large carbon footprint. Seventy percent of the people come out ahead. Fee & dividend is a base that aids all other carbon policies. The UK (like the US) is 5X more responsible for global warming than the average nation. With strong leadership from the PM, the UK parliamentary system is capable of adopting this year such a science-based system. Just as the industrial revolution moved from the UK to the US, so too could a proper way to put a price on carbon. The PM has the opportunity to earn a special place in history and the gratitude of young people. Let’s see if he can grasp it. Note: with a sufficient, rising price on carbon, steel production need not be done with coal." A full copy of the letter to PM Johnson is available here - 4) More on The Dasgupta Review - I included information in the last newsletter about this recently released review in the UK. Here is one small extract from a Guardian article that drew my attention and I wish to share - "The review is full of alarming statistics, of which perhaps the scariest is that in little more than two decades, between 1992 and 2014, there was a 40% fall in the stock of natural capital per person. That is the water we drink, the air we breathe, the soil we grow food in, and all living things shared among the global population. This really is capitalism for dummies, because any company that was as cavalier about its inventories of all other forms of capital – its machines, its IT systems, its buildings and its people – would soon go out of business. Yes, the report notes, there has been growth. Measured by gross domestic product (GDP), the global economy is 14 times bigger than it was in 1950. There has been a massive increase in prosperity but it has come at a “devastating” cost to nature: the extinction of species; the depletion of fish stocks; the destruction of coral reefs; the shrinking of the rain forests. At current levels of consumption, we require an Earth 1.6 times larger than its actual size." The full article is available here - Kathryn Ryan from Radio NZ's Nine to Noon also did a half hour interview with Sir Partha Dasgupta, which is available here - In the interview he highlights that GDP is not fit for purpose. “The problem with GDP is that it doesn’t include the depreciation of capital and one of the natural capital, or nature, which is somewhat different from buildings and roads in that you can really depreciate it very fast." "We could depreciate building very fast too if we chose too, they do get depreciated if there is a war, but since we don’t think of war as being an actual state if affairs we think of about 4 to 5 percent as a depreciation allowance. “But when it comes to natural capital you can actually completely wipe out natural capital pretty fast.” We tend to subsidise the use of natural capital, he says. Nature’s goods and services are not free in fact the price is often negative. “To the extent that it’s now about 4 to 5 percent of global GDP is in the form of subsidy." “Now that is absolutely outrageous, you are not only regarding nature to be valueless, but you are saying it is actually a pest. You are paying yourself to destroy it.” 5) Will this be the end for Coal in Pakistan? 350.org had an item noting this recent announcement in Pakistan. It is clear from reading the article that there are unanswered questions about this new policy. Let's hope it results in real action that reduces emissions. Pakistan’s Prime Minister announced during the virtual Climate Ambition Summit last weekend that the country won’t approve any new coal plants and by 2030, 60% of the energy produced in Pakistan will be generated through renewable resources. Pakistan has taken steps to increase the role of renewables in its energy mix. In 2019 it reversed a three-year ban on investing in solar and wind that was put in place by the previous government. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) predicts that the share of renewables in power generation will rise to 86% globally by 2050, compared to 25% today, with 60% of that share coming from solar and wind. Will Pakistan’s new statement pave the way for more countries in South Asia to declare No coal policies? Will India and Bangladesh follow suit? Only time will tell but we will keep a watch and keep fighting until the region embraces 100% renewable energy. Full article available here - 6) Our Great Reckoning - Eileen Crist On The Consequences Of Human Plunder. Eileen Crist is the author of a book titled "Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization". She was interviewed late last year about the book and the full text of that interview is available here - Here is an extract from the prelude to the interview. Eileen Crist knows more than a person should, more than seems healthy, about dying birds and dying watersheds. She’s keenly aware of the global crisis of biodiversity loss and ecological collapse, and she sees what’s driving it: direct causes like climate change and what she calls the “ultimate causes” — population growth, over consumption, and technological power. But the thing that really interests Crist, the thing that she’s been studying and publicizing for the past three decades as a professor and radical environmental thinker, is an even deeper question: Why is so little being done to address this planetary emergency? She attempts, with a mix of intellectual rigor and lyrical passion, to provide an answer in her 2019 book, Abundant Earth: Toward an Ecological Civilization. The cause of our inaction, she says, is “human supremacy,” a largely unconscious belief that Homo sapiens are the masters of creation rather than just one humble species among millions. This worldview sanctions not only factory farming, clear-cut logging, mountaintop-removal mining, and bottom-trawl fishing, but also more commonplace behaviors such as cruising along in cars that slaughter wildlife and emit carbon dioxide. As long as human supremacy prevails, Crist writes, “humanity will remain unable to muster the will to scale down and pull back the burgeoning human enterprise that is unraveling Earth’s biological wealth.” 7) Update on Ecocide campaign. In an amendment to its report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World 2019, the European Parliament has voted to urge “the EU and the Member States to promote the recognition of ecocide as an international crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)”. MEP Marie Toussaint, long-term campaigner for EU recognition of ecocide, said: “This is a real victory, a first major step towards the recognition of ecocide by the European Union. Member states must now speak out at the ICC and on the international stage. Climate change is accelerating, the loss of biodiversity is leading to planetary pandemics, the sea is rising: let’s move forward fast!” Chair of the Stop Ecocide Foundation Jojo Mehta says: “This European parliamentary vote is hugely encouraging. The political world is rapidly waking up to what scientists have been telling us for decades and the indigenous world has been telling us for centuries: that humanity cannot destroy the natural world with impunity. There are consequences. We know now that tipping points are being crossed and we have a short time to act. Making ecocide a crime recognises this, providing a practical guardrail to prevent the worst excesses of damage that are pushing Earth’s life-support systems towards breaking point.” Full item is available here - Jojo Mehta from "Stop Ecocide" also co-authored an Opinion piece published in the Guardian last month which highlighted that only two countries in the world are on track to meet the 1.5C target. "The science is clear: without drastic action to limit temperature rise below 1.5C, the Earth, and all life on it, including all human beings, will suffer devastating consequences. Yet only two countries – Morocco and the Gambia – are on track to meet the 1.5C target. The largest emitters, including the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, are putting the world on course for 4C. At that rate, the polar ice caps will melt, causing dramatic sea level rise that will – in combination with other devastating effects like strengthening storms and droughts – cause mass famine, displacement and extinction. Currently, much of humanity feels hopeless, but the establishment of ecocide as a crime offers something for people to get behind. Enacting laws against ecocide, as is under consideration in a growing number of jurisdictions, offers a way to correct the shortcomings of the Paris agreement. Whereas Paris lacks sufficient ambition, transparency and accountability, the criminalization of ecocide would be an enforceable deterrent. Outlawing ecocide would also address a key root cause of global climate change: the widespread destruction of nature, which, in addition to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, has devastating impacts on global health, food and water security, and sustainable development – to name a few. Ecocide shares its roots with other landmark concepts in international law, including genocide. Indeed, ecocide and genocide often go hand in hand. Around the globe, ecological destruction is also decimating indigenous communities. Indeed, the meaning of ecocide is fully encapsulated by its etymology. It comes from the Greek oikos (home) and the Latin cadere (to kill). Ecocide is literally “killing our home”. The full article is available here - 8) Climate Action Tracker - The Climate Action Tracker website is a useful resource for identifying how well different countries around the world are progressing towards meeting their Paris Climate Accord targets. They have a useful analysis of how NZ is doing with their efforts. 9) Another legal win for the biosphere - A court in Paris has ruled that France's government is guilty of climate inaction in a ground-breaking legal case. The decision comes after a group of NGOs, with the support of two million citizens, filed a lawsuit against the French government for failing to meet the country's commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The legal claim was hailed as the "L'Affaire du siècle" or "the case of the century" by activists, who first started the dispute in March 2019. Today, the court ruled that France has not done enough to meet its mandated goals to reduce greenhouse gases. "Justice has just recognised that the state's climate inaction is illegal," said the campaigners behind the lawsuit. "This is a historic victory for the climate!" France's commitment to curb global warming comes from the Paris Agreement, which was signed at COP21 in 2015. This international accord holds countries responsible for limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees more than pre-industrial levels. The lawsuit is not about punishing the government now, but instead about ensuring French leaders are found to be legally culpable over climate inaction. France already has an existing legal precedent of 'ecological prejudice', which was added to the French Civil Code in 2016. In cases relating to ecological prejudice, companies can be ordered to pay for the clean-up or repairs from whatever environmental damage has taken place. Last year France took this a step further and made 'ecocide' a crime, punishable by fines of up to €4.5 million and up to a decade-long prison sentence. The article is available here - 10) Nairobi Entrepreneur recycling plastic waste into bricks that are more durable than concrete. Collectively, we use a staggering amount of single-use plastic each year—we buy one million plastic bottles each minute around the world—most of which ends up in landfills, oceans, and other natural spaces. Nzambi Matee, a 29-year-old entrepreneur from Nairobi, is combatting this global crisis by recycling bags, containers, and other waste products into bricks used for patios and other construction projects. Prior to launching her company, Gjenge Makers, Matee worked as a data analyst and oil-industry engineer. After encountering plastic waste along Nairobi’s streets, she decided to quit her job and created a small lab in her mother’s backyard, testing sand and plastic combinations. Matee eventually received a scholarship to study in the materials lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she ultimately developed a prototype for the machine that now produces the textured bricks. Made from a combination of plastic and sand, the pavers have a melting point higher than 350°C and are more durable than their concrete counterparts. Matee and her team source much of the raw product from factories and recyclers, and sometimes it’s free, which allows the company to reduce the price point on the product and make it affordable for schools and homeowners. So far, Gjenge Makers has recycled more than 20 tons of plastic and created 112 job opportunities in the community. “It is absurd that we still have this problem of providing decent shelter – a basic human need,” Matee said in a statement. “Plastic is a material that is misused and misunderstood. The potential is enormous, but its afterlife can be disastrous.” The full article can be seen here with another article about similar developments in Colombia here - 11) Tiny Costa Rica wants the world to take giant climate step. In January, more than 50 countries committed to the protection of 30% of the planet’s land and oceans as part of the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, spearheaded by Costa Rica, which is a co-chair alongside France and the UK. The coalition hopes the target will become the headline aim for an international agreement on halting biodiversity loss for this decade, set to be negotiated in Kunming, China, later this year. “Our approach is to lead by example. As Mandela said, ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done’,” Costa Rican president Carlos Alvarado Quesada told the Guardian. “Conservation is one of the key factors that scientists point out as relevant for protecting biodiversity and also for addressing the climate crisis. But working alone, it’s not as effective.” The world has never met a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems. But the 41-year-old leader believes this time might be different. The full article can be seen here - 12) Navigating Energy Descent Pathways. Wikipedia - "Energy descent is a process whereby a society either voluntarily or involuntarily reduces its total energy consumption." Here is an extract from a paper published last year looking in some detail at the whole issue of Energy Descent. This may well be something we all need to face in the years ahead so better to be informed than keep our heads in the sand. "Much mainstream energy and sustainability discourse is based on a series of highly optimistic assumptions about future energy supply in a carbon-constrained world. The improbability of conditions aligning such that all necessary assumptions are borne out implies that the energy futures ahead will likely diverge significantly from those envisaged within this established discourse. This has potentially profound implications. The availability of energy in the right forms at sufficient rates is the lifeblood of any particular form of social organization. Energy-related factors are fundamental to how we shape our societies and pursue our goals, yet it seems most individuals and societies are making plans based on precarious expectations. One of the goals of the present analysis is to encourage readers to treat the prospect that these expectations will not be realized as, at the very least, a matter of plausibility. In the event that mainstream expectations are thwarted, the consequences could range from the disruptive to the catastrophic. This is not a case against optimism, but rather of channelling it in directions that lie within humanity’s scope of influence. All human societies exist interdependently with natural systems that are ultimately beyond human control. It is far preferable, we contend, that societies retain the greatest degree of agency possible in getting to grips with the dilemma of fossil fuel dependence. The alternative is to have our futures dictated to us by breakdown in natural systems that are beyond our capacity to control. Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) offers a means for societies to manage the reduction in fossil fuel use in an orderly and coordinated way, so that citizens retain as much scope as possible for choosing the forms that their post-carbon futures might take." The full paper can be viewed here - 13) Tradable Energy Quotas. In the paper from item 12 above TEQs are referenced. The Fleming Policy Centre in the UK has done considerable work on this method. They claim introduction of such a system would ensure fair access to energy for all, guarantee that a nation meets its emissions reductions targets, and support the active participation and cooperation of citizens and all other energy users in rapidly reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Here is a brief outline of the main points about TEQs from their website.
14) The Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration -
They have some very interesting papers on their website including a recent one titled "CARBON BUDGETS FOR 1.5 & 2°C" which is available here - The SUMMARY of this paper says -
The cryptocurrency’s value has dipped recently after passing a high of $50,000 but the energy used to create it has continued to soar during its epic rise, climbing to the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of Argentina, according to Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a tool from researchers at Cambridge University that measures the currency’s energy use. Recent interest from major Wall Street institutions like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs probably culminated in the currency’s rise in value and an endorsement by Tesla’s Elon Musk helped drive its recent high as investors bet the cryptocurrency will become more widely embraced in the near future. You can see the full Guardian article here and here is another article from Stuff on the same topic. 16) 350.org and their petition calling for ACC to stop investing in fossil fuels. In the past week, ACC’s investments have made news headlines, following the story that Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has written to chairs of the Super Fund and ACC. The letters ask them to adopt ethical investment policies and sets an expectation that Government funds lead the way to achieve our shared target of being carbon-zero by 2050. Grant Robertson hasn’t explicitly outlined where our public funds should or shouldn’t be investing. This means that as key stakeholders of ACC, through receiving care or contributing levies, all of us have an opportunity to raise our voices and set the standard we expect for ACC’s ethical investment approach. Together we can use this moment to strengthen our call for ACC to stop investing in climate-wrecking fossil fuel companies. ACC’s current investments funnel over $200 million of our public money into the hands of the fossil fuel industry. The most effective way we can stop the worst impacts of the climate crisis is by keeping polluting fossil fuels in the ground. In order to do this, we need to stop the flow of money that enables fossil fuel projects to go ahead. If you want to support this campaign you can sign their petition here - 17) Earth Day 2021 I wanted to finish with a link to a short video trailer from a film by Joe Gantz called "The Race to Save the World" which is being released on International Earth Day, April 22nd. The trailer is available here and highlights the critical role that activists play in raising awareness of the major issues threatening the biosphere. The one and only biosphere that supports Earth's miraculous web of life. Remember the local Marlborough Earth Day Picnic is on Sunday, April 18th at Pollard Park from 10am to 3pm. Nga mihi nui, Budyong. Kia ora, Welcome to a new year. 2020 was one to remember. I suspect 2021 will also have it's fair share of surprises. It seems to be the times we are living in. So "Expect the Unexpected!" I feel a need to apologise in advance for the tone of some of this newsletter. On completing it I felt some of the items have a "doomster" feel to them. Unfortunately, when analysed they appear to be very real and well supported by scientific evidence so we need to take them seriously. I believe they do reflect the very real challenges we all face in regard to the wide ranging threats to the planetary ecosystems and climate. Thankfully all the items are not negative and I have been able to finish with something beautiful. So, if you choose to read none of the items below I encourage you to at least go to number 9 if you feel like being uplifted. There is a link to a 4 minute YouTube clip of Amanda Gorman, who is the current "Youth Poet Laureate of the United States" where she recites a poem about Climate Change. She has the ability to move people's hearts and bring tears to your eyes on an issue that is so critical to the future of our beautiful planet Earth. As she says so eloquently - "The time is now, now, now..." 1) MDC has secured funding for the Te Hoiere Catchment Project. Funding totalling $1,000,000 has been allocated from the Ministry for the Environment’s Freshwater Improvement Fund over the next five years. This funding provides start-up funds for the Te Hoiere Project and will enable the completion of a Catchment Condition Survey and commencement of on-ground restoration work.Council applied in December 2020 to the Freshwater Improvement Fund to enable work to begin on the Te Hoiere Project. The application was successful in receiving $1,000,000 in funding to accompany $100,000 of existing Council funding. Ministry funding is spread over five years from June 2021 (although a Deed of Contribution will enable work to commence immediately). On-ground work will include up to 30 km of riparian and significant Wetland fencing work, 6 hectares of riparian planting, planting of 20,000 riparian plants, four education workshops per year and introduction of up to 50 farm packs of dung beetles.9. The funding is expected to generate approximately 22,000 person hours of work (11 FTE) as part of the Jobs for Nature programme. The funding also provides for a part-time project manager to implement the work. More info is available here if you're interested. It is item 4 on the Environment Committee agenda. 2) Global Temperature in 2020 - Analysis from James Hansen and others. Global surface temperature in 2020 was in a virtual dead-heat with 2016 for warmest year in the period of instrumental data in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. The rate of global warming has accelerated in the past several years. The 2020 global temperature was +1.3°C (~2.3°F) warmer than in the 1880-1920 base period; global temperature in that base period is a reasonable estimate of ‘pre-industrial’ temperature. The six warmest years in the GISS record all occur in the past six years, and the 10 warmest years are all in the 21st century. Growth rates of the greenhouse gases driving global warming are increasing, not declining. Full article available here -  3) Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of EcocideThe Stop Ecocide Foundation, at the request of parliamentarians from the governing parties in Sweden, has convened an Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide. The Panel is tasked with drafting a definition which may be considered by interested state parties for possible proposal to the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, as a potential 5th crime under that Statute. The Panel is seeking to consult interested stakeholders in all regions, in order to obtain a wide range of perspectives to inform the drafting process. Responses are being sort by February 18th. More info available here - 4) Global ice loss accelerating at record rate, study finds. The melting of ice across the planet is accelerating at a record rate, with the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets speeding up the fastest, research has found. The rate of loss is now in line with the worst-case scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on the climate, according to a paper published on Monday in the journal The Cryosphere. Thomas Slater, lead author and research fellow at the centre for polar observation and modelling at the University of Leeds, warned that the consequences would be felt around the world. “Sea level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century,” he said. About 28tn tonnes of ice was lost between 1994 and 2017, which the authors of the paper calculate would be enough to put an ice sheet 100 metres thick across the UK. About two thirds of the ice loss was caused by the warming of the atmosphere, with about a third caused by the warming of the seas. Over the period studied, the rate of ice loss accelerated by 57%, the paper found, from 0.8tn tonnes a year in the 1990s to 1.2tn tonnes a year by 2017. Full article available here - I'm always interested when reports such as this come out providing evidence which is in line with IPCC worst case scenarios. Of course it goes without saying that if we continue to follow worst case scenario trends the outcomes will be serious for the planet's future. This is something those reading this newsletter all understand. When these scenarios were first laid I suspect many people made the inference that there is a low chance of worst case scenarios eventuating and yet, as time passes and more evidence accumulates. the trends continue in the wrong direction. Very sobering!5) Release of first Climate Commission advice. Most people will be aware The Climate Commission released their first package of advice for public consultation on February 1st. The advice covers the first three carbon budgets (out to 2035) and provides a detailed plan on how to achieve them. Robert McLachlan, who is a professor in applied mathematics at Massey University, has written a good article in the Guardian here - It is headed, "New Zealand will need a policy revolution to meet climate commission's brief", and covers the main issues in the release. It concludes that the changes called for will require rapid and sweeping regulation in all areas of society from transport to forestry. If you are interested in more detail you can listen to Dr Rod Carr (Chair of the Climate Commission) delve into the detail of the Commission’s advice on the steps Aotearoa must take to reach its climate targets, and what this could mean for New Zealanders. The Climate Commission has this webinar and an excellent range of other sessions available on their website here - Some of those sessions are -
6) A useful article was printed on the Stuff website a week before the Climate Commission release. It was headed "The change that'll make Rogernomics 'look like a trial period'" and in it they said - "The biggest economic transformation since the 1980s is coming – and many of us don’t even know it. The shifts required to run our economy without fossil fuels will make the economic changes of the late 1980s “look like a trial period”, in the words of Climate Change Commission chair Rod Carr. This time, Carr and his fellow commissioners (and the governments that receive their advice) will need to succeed where leaders of the 1980s failed, by transforming the country without the mass pain and job losses that accompanied Rogernomics. That’s the plan, but how will we do it? We’ll get our first glimpse on February 1, when the Climate Change Commission releases a draft blueprint to the public. The headline of next week’s release will be three draft carbon budgets, each putting a cap on how much greenhouse gas the entire country can emit during a five-year period, starting this year and ending in 2035. Climate Change Minister James Shaw has said he thinks many people will be shocked by how much New Zealand needs to cut its emissions. But the alternative – inaction and climate catastrophe – would be worse." The full article is available here - 7) The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. Here is an article about another report released in the UK on February 2nd, highlighting that a worst case scenario outcome is imminent for our planet's biodiversity and that if we are to have any chance of addressing this challenge we must completely change our economic systems."Our economies, livelihoods and wellbeing all depend on our most precious asset: nature. We are part of nature, not separate from it.” These are the opening lines of a newly published landmark review of the economics of biodiversity. Biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history and the review aims to create a new economic framework, grounded in ecology, that enables humanity to live on Earth sustainably. “Our demands far exceed nature’s capacity to supply us with the goods and services we all rely on. We would require 1.6 Earths to maintain the world’s current living standards,” says Prof Sir Partha Dasgupta in the review, which was commissioned by the UK Treasury. “Humanity faces an urgent choice,” he says. “Continuing down our current path presents extreme risks and uncertainty for our economies. Choosing a sustainable path will require transformative change, underpinned by levels of ambition, coordination and political will akin to, or even greater than, those of the Marshall Plan [under which Europe was rebuilt after the second world war].” Jennifer Morris, CEO of the Nature Conservancy, said: “Science shows us that nature is teetering on a knife-edge. The upcoming UN summits on climate and biodiversity in 2021 provide an unparalleled opportunity to redefine the relationship between people and nature. Our shared planet is counting on all of us to step up and protect our natural world for generations to come.” Nina Seega, at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, said: “The review’s focus on completely rewiring mainstream economic and financial models is key to moving the nature debate on to the agenda of governments, financial regulators and individual financial firms. “It is especially pertinent to take the opportunity presented by the Covid-19 crisis to align the underpinnings of our economic and financial system with a sustainable future.” The Dasgupta review concludes: “To detach nature from economic reasoning is to imply that we consider ourselves to be external to nature. The fault is not in economics; it lies in the way we have chosen to practise it. Transformative change is possible – we and our descendants deserve nothing less.” The full article is available here - Online copies of the full 600 page review and an abridged version are available here - 8) Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruption. The planet is facing a “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” that threaten human survival because of ignorance and inaction, according to an international group of scientists, who warn people still haven’t grasped the urgency of the biodiversity and climate crises. The 17 experts, including Prof Paul Ehrlich from Stanford University, author of The Population Bomb, and scientists from Mexico, Australia and the US, say the planet is in a much worse state than most people – even scientists – understood. "The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts,” they write in a report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which references more than 150 studies detailing the world’s major environmental challenges. The delay between destruction of the natural world and the impacts of these actions means people do not recognise how vast the problem is, the paper argues. “[The] mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilisation.” “Ours is not a call to surrender – we aim to provide leaders with a realistic ‘cold shower’ of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future,” it adds. Dealing with the enormity of the problem requires far-reaching changes to global capitalism, education and equality, the paper says. These include abolishing the idea of perpetual economic growth, properly pricing environmental externalities, stopping the use of fossil fuels, reining in corporate lobbying, and empowering women, the researchers argue. The full article is available here - And the report itself is available in full here - 9) 24 Hours of Reality: "Earthrise" by Amanda Gorman. I'm relieved to be able to finish this newsletter with something so positive and heartwarming. You can listen to her poem here - "It is a hope that implores us at an uncompromising core to keep rising up for an Earth more than worth fighting for." Nga mihi nui, Budyong. Here are a few items of interest from over the last three months. (the bold type is my emphasis). 1) A report was presented to the MDC Environment Committee on October 8th titled – Wairau Offshore Groundwater Geological Assessment. It was prepared for Council by BECA in March 2020 and is – “a re-examination of the possibility of an ocean outlet for the Wairau Aquifer by an external technical expert showing that, based on recent offshore geophysical surveys, the geological formation hosting the aquifer extends well out into Cloudy Bay/Cook Strait and is exposed at the seabed, potentially allowing drainage of fresh groundwater to the sea.” In the presentation it states – “An improved understanding of how groundwater exits the Wairau Aquifer was overdue given sea level rise and the declining levels in the Wairau Aquifer providing less throughflow to maintain the seawater interface in its current position.” If anyone wants to see the full summary you can check it out here under Item 5 – 2) A presentation was also made updating the Committee on the recent Resource Management review undertaken by the Government. The presentation outlined that key concerns promoting the review were:
First to repeal the RMA and replace it with the Natural and Built Environment Act (NBEA). This would have a substantially different approach but would incorporate some of the key principles of the RMA that are appropriate. The focus of the NBEA would be on: enhancing the quality of the environment; and achieving positive outcomes to support the wellbeing of present and future generations. Introduction of new legislation called the Strategic Planning Act (SPA). The SPA would: set long-term strategic goals; and facilitate the integration of legislative functions across the resource management system. The concept of Te Mana o te Taiao (which refers to the importance of maintaining the health of our natural resources, such as air, water, and soil, and their capacity to sustain life) will also be captured in the NBEA. Recognition of Maori and their rights in our freshwater resources has been reviewed. As a result, the Panel has recommended that the Crown and Māori address and resolve issues sooner rather than later as without such a solution, the allocation and use of water rights will continue to pose significant difficulties for all those involved in the system. The Panel has emphasized that while the legislative changes proposed are vital, the success of the new resource management system will depend critically on the capacity and capability of all those involved in it. As a result, they have concluded that increased funding and resources need to be provided by both central and local government. The lack of sufficient resources and build capability has been noted as being one of the important reasons for the failure of the RMA to deliver its intended outcomes in the first place. The Amendment Act also supports the need to improve freshwater management and respond to climate change in New Zealand. This is brought by way of a new freshwater planning process that regional councils and unitary authorities, like Marlborough District Council, must use for proposed freshwater provisions in regional policy statements and regional plans (excluding regional coastal plans). These new freshwater planning process provisions have been introduced to enable regional councils to make changes to their freshwater plans in a robust but more efficient way than those outlined in the current RMA planning process. The full summary of the presentation can be seen here under Item 13. 3) Here is the summary of the updated report to council on the NZ Biodiversity Strategy. Te Mana O Te Taiao, the Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy 2020 (the Strategy) was launched in August 2020 and sets out a framework for the protection, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity or natural resources. The document has been developed by the Department of Conservation, with specific input from other agencies, including councils and external experts. It is a compilation of existing data and published information in indigenous biodiversity, supplemented by examples from a matauranga Māori perspective. The Strategy will guide the way all Aotearoa works to protect and restore nature and supersedes the Action Plan published in 2016. The Strategy sets out a strategic framework for the protection, restoration and sustainable use of biodiversity or natural resources in New Zealand and makes direct connection to a thriving nature, ecosystem health and wellbeing of people and sustainable business. In terms of background, despite the importance of biodiversity, it continues to decline. Biodiversity faces a global crisis, as well as New Zealand, and our own region is not immune. While there are success stories in conservation the main biodiversity pressures come from:
The three pillars are:
Te Mana O Te Taiao - Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy 2020 is available here on the Department of Conservation’s website. Reports such as the three I've highlighted in this newsletter are regularly given by MDC staff to the councillors. These reports are often very useful summaries for the lay person to get their head around particular issues. 4) Here is an interesting graph recently received from James Hansen. It shows an acceleration in global warming. In the past five years global temperature has jumped well above the trend which has been stable at about 0.18°C per decade for the past half century. This deviation is too large to be explained by unforced climate variability. James analyses various possibilities for why this is happening and excludes solar irradiance, ocean heating imbalance, an increase in the magnitude of fast feedbacks and sea ice cover. His conclusion is that it is due to a decrease in atmospheric aerosols. This is the one large unmeasured forcing that climate scientists are aware of. He highlights that it is intentionally unmeasured. I think that is due to inadequate funding and the complexity of the science required to quantify the effect of atmospheric aerosols.  You can find the full analysis here –
5) I listened to an interesting online talk on Pumped Storage organised by “Engineers for Social Responsibility” on October 21st. It was presented by Dr Alastair Barnett who says that recent proposals for pumped hydro storage ignore thorough planning work done in the 1970s. I must say his talk was enlightening and left me wondering whether people with his experience and knowledge are being listened to. Here is an abstract of his talk for those who are interested. Until the recent flurry of publicity about the Lake Onslow proposal, pumped hydropower storage had not been seriously considered in New Zealand since the 1970s. At that time the Tekapo canal was under construction to link the two main storage reservoirs (Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki) in the Upper Waitaki power development, and an obvious option was to design the canal to take pumped flow from Pukaki to Tekapo as well as gravity flow from Tekapo to Pukaki. The canal design was duly analysed, constructed and tested to have the required reverse flow capacity, but meanwhile developments of the recently discovered Maui gas field were found to favour use of the gas at a high extraction rate, making a strong case for expanded national reliance on thermal power generation at the new Huntly power station. Accordingly design and installation of the necessary pumps at each end of the canal (the Tekapo A and B stations) was discontinued until the end of the productive life of Maui gas supplies, then projected to be at least thirty years away. Subsequently the entire public works hydropower design team was disbanded, leaving no-one with institutional memory of a large scale hydro design team planning for the end of Maui gas supplies, although this continued to occur at close to projected rates. Even if a replacement can now be found for the Maui field, the threat of climate change demands an end to thermal generation. Yet until now a lack of action on hydropower development has forced our generators to resort to desperate measures such as large scale importation of coal for the first time, actually increasing our thermal emissions. Wind power and solar power offer a partial solution as new sustainable energy sources, but these continually fluctuate between surplus and deficit, making the smoothing effect of pumped storage even more critical. Finally the disastrous outcomes of poor power planning seem to have been recognised this year, but the reaction appears to be one of panic, adopting the first scheme which comes to mind without any comparison with alternatives. In particular, paying to complete the final 10% of the exhaustively studied Tekapo-Pukaki linkage seems not to have been considered. The contrast between the deliberate, intensively researched power planning of the 1970s and the impulsive gambles of the early 2020s was the subject of the presentation. Here is a link to his submission to the Zero Carbon Act in 2018 focussed on Pumped Storage. and here is a link to a very informative and relevant article my Molly Melhuish. 6) The Aussies are planning the largest solar and wind energy project in the world in the Pilbara region of WA with the aim of exporting renewable energy to Asia. It is planned to cover 6,500 square kilometres. The first stage would be capable of generating 100 terawatt-hours of renewable electricity each year. That equates to about 40% of Australia’s total electricity generation in 2019. "The project is backed by a consortium of global renewables developers. Most energy from the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) will be used to produce green hydrogen and ammonia to be used both domestically, and for shipping to export markets. Some energy from AREH will also be exported as electricity, carried by an undersea electrical cable. Another Australian project is also seeking to export renewable power to Asia. The 10-gigawatt Sun Cable project, backed by tech entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes, involves a solar farm across 15,000 hectares near Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory. Power generated will supply Darwin and be exported to Singapore via a 3,800km electrical cable along the sea floor." It does make me wonder about the impacts on the fragile desert environment in that area. Is this really the solution to our climate disruption problems? I’m sceptical of the whole push for “green” hydrogen production with some of the information available about its limitations. (more in the next item) It raises the whole issue of energy descent and the need to change our consumer lifestyles. (Energy descent is a process whereby a society either voluntarily or involuntarily reduces its total energy consumption.) You can read more about this project here if interested. 7) I recently heard Susan Krumdieck from Canterbury University talking on National Radio about green hydrogen in the context of the proposed Tiwai Point closure. As usual she didn’t mince her words. Some CKM members are familiar with Susan as we did an online Transition Engineering course that she offered earlier this year. Here’s a summary of the item. The government should stop focusing on unproven hydrogen energy technology to tackle climate change, says an expert. Canterbury University professor of mechanical engineering Susan Krumdieck said the government was enthusiastic about the development of green hydrogen, but it was a waste of time and money. Proven technologies could be used to meet New Zealand's zero carbon goal by 2050 - and address transport needs at the same time, she said. Surplus energy from Manapouri should be used to develop a national transport system starting from Invercargill and extending throughout the South Island, before crossing Cook Strait. KiwiRail could be a key part of the development, which would provide thousands of jobs. "The South Island becomes a net zero (carbon) island, one of the first ones in the world," Krumdieck said. "We have the capability in New Zealand to beef up our rail engineering and our power electric power engineering for transport." She said it would take about 10 years to electrify the South Island's transport network. Good to see her getting airtime on National Radio presenting a different view to the popular narrative about “green” hydrogen. 7) I was interested in this analysis of the possible impact of the recent White House action in the US where scientist Michael Kuperberg was removed from his job. The White House has removed the scientist responsible for the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s premier contribution to climate knowledge and the foundation for regulations to combat global warming, in what critics interpreted as the latest sign that the Trump administration intends to use its remaining months in office to continue impeding climate science and policy. Dr. Kuperberg’s dismissal appears to be the latest setback in the Trump administration for the National Climate Assessment, a report from 13 federal agencies and outside scientists that the government is required by law to produce every four years. The most recent report, in 2018, found that climate change poses an imminent and dire threat to the United States and its economy. A biased or diminished climate assessment would have wide-ranging implications. It could be used in court to bolster the positions of fossil fuel companies being sued for climate damages. It could counter congressional efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming. And, ultimately, it could weaken what is known as the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that said carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health and therefore are subject to government regulation. Undercutting that finding could make it more difficult to fight climate change under the terms of the Clean Air Act. Here is a good article about it. 8) Following on from the item in our last newsletter about France's action in this area Belgium has also pledged diplomatic action to halt ecocide crime and Sweden is also discussing the issue. Wouldn't it be good to see our current government getting active in this area and taking some real and effective action. The pledges follow Green (Ecolo) MP Samuel Cogolati’s proposal in July that the government support the initiative of Vanuatu and the Maldives, which both called last year for serious consideration of amending the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute to include ecocide. Cogolati is pleased with the government’s commitment, underlining the urgency of the global situation: “We must protect nature and future generations in much stronger, more enforceable ways... Because without water, without forests, without clean air, we cannot survive on Earth. The planet is our common home. It’s time for criminal law to urgently come to the rescue.” Jojo Mehta from Stop Ecocide explains more about Ecocide: “While our working definition is in essence mass damage and destruction of ecosystems, committed with knowledge of the risks, an expert panel of international criminal lawyers, advised by top climate and environmental scientists, is currently being convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation. The panel’s remit is to draft a clear and legally robust definition which can be considered for proposal by states at the International Criminal Court. A full list of panel members will be made available in due course." Sweden has become the latest European state this year to discuss criminalising ecocide. Two separate motions have been submitted to the Swedish parliament by a combination of three political parties. MEP (Member of European Parliament) Marie Toussaint has also launched an initiative connecting parliamentarians around the world in a coalition for the recognition of ecocide crime. Beginning with 10 parliamentarians from Brazil to Belgium, this group is set to grow fast, and the Stop Ecocide group is looking forward to working together on progressing ecocide law. If interested you can see more info here and here. 9) Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr spoke at the Pacific Ocean Pacific Climate Conference recently where he said – “Climate change is a key risk to the financial stability of the New Zealand economy. There was a need for transformational change and a collective and urgent response to climate risks. There is a lot to do and we are late in leaving port. Climate change is a risk that requires a collective response. Grounding a response in our collective knowledge, data and expertise will strengthen and compound the effects of our actions.” He said assessing risks to banks and insurers, and the financial system as a whole, was the Reserve Bank’s core business and climate risk would sit within that. That would include the effect of drought and rising sea levels on the value of houses and farms. “There are also risks associated with the transition to a low carbon economy, such as changing investor appetite and consumer demand. New Zealand being a small island nation with an agricultural-based economy means we will be impacted differently than others. And thus, we must keep our preparations in tune with our environment and resources, for our economy to prosper.” 10) The company Solidia has developed a new low carbon cement which looks promising. In 2016 world cement production generated around 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 - equivalent to 8% of the global total. With current technology for every tonne of cement produced a tonne of CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Because the cement is cured by CO2 rather than water the process has the added bonus of saving water resources. Here’s an extract about it: By changing the chemistry of cement, Solidia both lowers emissions at the cement plant and consumes CO2 in the production of concrete. Our cement reacts with CO2 instead of water. During curing, the chemical reaction with our cement breaks apart the CO2 molecules and captures the carbon to make limestone that glues the concrete together. For production of precast concrete that is cured in kilns, when you combine the emissions reduction during cement production with CO2 consumption during curing, we reduce cement’s carbon footprint by up to 70%. There is a different carbon delivery system developed for ready-mix. Since we can’t use CO2 gas at a construction site, we had to introduce it into our concrete in solid or liquid form. We are partnering with companies that are turning waste CO2 into a family of chemicals, like oxalic or even citric acid – the same one in orange juice. We use these acids to react with our cement and pack in as much as four times more carbon, resulting in carbon-negative concrete. That means that, in just a few hours, one kilometre of road could permanently consume the same amount of CO2 that nearly 100,000 trees absorb in one year. Thanks to chemistry and waste CO2, we have the potential to transform concrete – the second most utilised material on the planet – into a carbon sink for the planet. Sounds promising. Let's hope this results in real changes in cement production around the world. It's not clear to me what the economic comparisons are between the new and present technologies and how fast change might happen. You can read more about this technology here Did you know 50 – 60% of annual CO2 from fossil fuel emissions adds to atmospheric CO2 increases. 30% goes into the water and the remainder goes to soil and plants. Nga mihi, Budyong |
AuthorThese newsletters are put together by Budyong Hill in an attempt to help keep Marlborough people informed of issues both global and local. The aim is help raise awareness of the myriad challenges facing the essential life support systems that our amazing planet provides for us every day. Archives
August 2022
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