February 2026

LOCAL

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

19/12/2025 - What we want for Christmas.

"After another year of climate-fuelled weather disasters – flooding in Tasman, damaging wind storms around the country and a huge wildfire in Tongariro National Park - we in the climate community will all have “national climate action” on our Christmas lists.  Unfortunately, this year, we will have to settle for nothing under the Christmas tree.
Perhaps naively, we might have had our hopes up after reading “Blueprint for a Better Environment”, the National Party’s environmental policy statement put out during the last election: 

“National is absolutely committed to New Zealand’s climate change targets, including: 
• Net zero greenhouse gas emissions excluding biogenic methane by 2050; 
• Biogenic methane reduced by 10 per cent by 2030 and 24–47 per cent by 2050 compared to 2017 levels; and 
• New Zealand’s Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below gross 2005 levels by 2030.”

06/01/2026 - Talking about a resolution.

"Happy New Year!  For those of you keen on New Year’s resolutions, I have a suggestion:  Do something good for our climate, our health, world peace and New Zealand’s prosperity - resolve to use less fossil fuel in 2026.  
We all know the connection to climate; carbon dioxide generated from the burning of fossil fuel is the principal cause of global warming and the accelerating number of destructive weather events we’ve been experiencing.  Our world is becoming less predictable and downright dangerous mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels."

14/02/2026 - Why so wet and cold.

"What a wet and cold summer!  How is this global warming?  I mean, it’s in the name, right?  Where is the warming?  Blenheim had it warmest year on record just last year.  Why so cold now?
Perhaps a better characterisation of our weather lately would be “global weirding”.  Our planet is not only getting generally hotter, global warming is messing with our weather systems in unexpectedly weird and worrying ways. 
The explanation for the “wet” is reasonably straightforward; the seas around New Zealand have been rapidly warming and sea surface temperatures were at record highs last year.  Warmer ocean water evaporates more moisture into the atmosphere and what goes up must come down.  It also doesn’t help that we are in a “La Niña” phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a shift in the winds across the South Pacific that brings wet weather to the western Pacific.  And, when warm moist air from the north hits cold air coming from the south, we can expect a lot of rain."

Here are links to copies of the full articles if you can't access them on The Press website - What we want for Christmas, Talking about a resolution, and Why so wet and cold. 

2) Climate Action Week 2026.

Cath van der Muelen has again applied her considerable energy and passion to the daunting task of organising another Climate Action Week that finished on February 27th. If you didn't participate but are interested in the wide range of topics covered over the 5 days then check out the full agenda. There were a wide range of speakers and contributors with the topics covered being Risk and Resilience, Circular economy & waste, Nature and Biodiversity, Aligning human and ecological systems, Climate leadership from over the hill, Hosted in Nelson. 
  
With the support of Marborough Express Cath, with the help of Tom Powell, also edited and organised a cover to cover edition of the Weekend Express which "pulled together stories from around Aotearoa and the Globe, that reveal how our climate is shifting and how practical action is already underway." 

There are some very good stories to be read. One that drew my attention was about the decline of Stokell's smelt in the Rakaia and other Canterbury rivers. The article explains that the collapse of the smelt population is an indicator of a degrading ecosystem. These calls of desperation from Papatuanuku are unfortunately largely going unheeded while we are distracted by the cost of living and the growing madness of global geopolitics. Unfortunately it is getting too late for many species and ecosystems. The hubris associated with the myth of human supremacy continues to grow while the natural systems that all life depends on collapse in front of our eyes.  

3) "The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything."

I have recently finished reading this book written by Peter Brannen. It is a fascinating insight into the history of Planet Earth over the last 4.5 billion years and the critical and central role that CO2 has played in the evolution of lifeforms. The author does a good job of explaining how this amazing process has played out and then applies the knowledge gained to the understanding of the global heating resulting from the actions of humanity over the last couple of hundred years.

A couple of quotes will give you a taste of the book - 

“You cannot expect to take fossilised solar energy for three hundred million years and let it off in a bang in a hundred and fifty years and get away with it. It’s ludicrous. Of course it’s going to be awful.” - Geochemist Michael Russell.

“It’s almost like a biblical resurrection story, we’re merely catalysts for the resurrection of the Carboniferous.” - Atmospheric physicist Tim Garrett. 

I have done a summary of one particular chapter titled "CO2 and the Great Age of Coal." In this chapter the author gives a brief synopsis of the history of our planet and the role that CO2 or the lack of it played in the different Ages. I have also included some important points he makes in the conclusion to his book. I recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in the history of our planet and wishes to increase their understanding of the predicament humanity now finds itself in. We have a copy in the CKM library.  

NATIONAL

4) Kia Tika, Kia Pono—For A Just Society.

This conference looks like the sort of event Aotearoa NZ needs in these eventful times. The ongoing efforts to fix and grow the economy by our current government may seem necessary to some but from my perspective this pathway leads to more and more inequality that is unaddressed and unrecognised in many instances. The objective of the conference is to develop "a new way of thinking about Aotearoa New Zealand as a society." 

Here is a brief synopsis from the conference organisers -

"Our task is to imagine a new language with which to address the issues that we are facing and help us move towards a just society and economy.

Following on from work such as Marilyn Waring’s analysis of GDP as a flawed measure to analyse and Matthew Scobie and Anna Sturman’s work on economic possibilities of decolonisation we are inviting people to address new ways of interrogating our multiple and interconnected crises of climate change, ecological destruction, wealth inequality, and poverty.

This is hard work, but the work has started and this conference aims to contribute to a paradigm change that is urgently needed. We know enough of what is wrong—we have the evidence on the causes and harms of pay inequity, poverty, and systemic destructive racism. Now we need to build a new analytical narrative that takes us from an extractive to a just economy and society. The new language we are inviting speakers to contribute to could be the scaffolding we need to get the building blocks for a just society. Setting about creating an Aotearoa New Zealand that is built on notions of comprehensive, holistic justice we need to re-imagine how an Aotearoa with a future would look.
Economists, environmental and medical experts, social scientists, Iwi, and community organisations are warning that the health of our country is eroding. Decades of declining investment in state services and a dominant extractive politics have created an unbalanced country in which an increasing majority is struggling to make ends meet and an environment endangered by continuing exploitative practices and climate change. A reset is needed.
There are concepts emerging internationally and nationally that will help us develop a framework for a society built on equity and justice for all. This conference will be a kōrero of scholars, activists, community builders, economists, and legal experts. To imagine a just society we must be willing to engage in exploration together—the speakers and the audience."

You can view the full agenda and register to attend in person or online if interested. 

5) Landslides are NZ’s deadliest natural hazard. Why does it still tolerate the risk?

"With the cost of landslides mounting, we might expect that when local authorities identify actions to reduce risk that could save money in the long run, these efforts would be welcomed by central government. Instead, they are often met with a phrase we have become too familiar with: we are in a “fiscally challenging environment”.

That may be. But it is also true that the costs associated with natural hazards are only likely to increase. The cheapest time to invest in resilience is now.

When it comes to landslides, we need to consider whether repeated fatalities from a known and worsening hazard are something we are prepared to tolerate. Aeroplane crashes have always been unacceptable to us, but the 2019 Ministry of Transport Road to Zero strategy suggested deaths in car crashes were becoming intolerable as well.

Perhaps now is the time to take a similar approach to landslides. With an election looming, political parties have a chance to put forward credible plans to reduce natural hazard risk or, better still, to agree on a non-partisan path that builds resilience for the long term."

Check out the full article on The Conversation website.

6) The bottle of milk that may have serious implications for NZ -

I have included items before in this newsletter about precision fermentation, particularly for producing milk products, and the claims that it will become so cheap that it will cause the collapse of the NZ dairy industry. This article published on Newsroom re-looks at this possibility and the implications for NZ farmers and the economy. 

Here is an extract - 

"Farmers who recently received a large Fonterra payout may consider investing in non-dairy milk that now actually tastes like milk. Maybe a little bit thinner than I would have expected for the 3 percent fat content advertised on the bottle. But certainly better than other lactose-free milk I’ve tried. Normal lactose-free milk converts lactose into simpler sugars that I find too sweet. Fortunately, I can drink normal milk without problems. Others in my household aren’t so lucky.

This lactose-free milk never had the lactose in the first place, because nobody built it in. The milk had never been through a cow at all. Never touched grass, never saw a milking parlour, did not require irrigation. No cows to create methane or urine patches that leach nitrogen.  In 2019, RethinkX predicted that precision fermentation would displace half of America’s cattle herd by 2030. The prediction seemed, and still seems, bullish. But not as bullish as I had thought. The precision-fermentation milk I drank last week is on store shelves in Israel and is reportedly cost-competitive with plant-based milks on the market. And unlike the plant milks, this one tastes like milk."

I was particularly interested in a couple of the comments at the end of the article which echoed some of my thoughts.

The first is from Ciaran Keogh - 

"What is overlooked in this somewhat excited commentary is that the feedstock for the bacterial fermentation process has to be sourced from some other biological material and google advises that “The best feedstocks for bacterial precision fermentation to produce milk proteins are primarily sugar-based substrates, such as glucose and sucrose, derived from high-yield crops like maize (corn) and sugar beet.” Google also notes that “The choice of feedstock involves balancing cost, sustainability, and efficiency for large-scale production.” so this might work for specific high value milk proteins but it could be a long way from replacing the dairy industry as cows are pretty good at converting low sugar biomass such as grass into milk without much in the way of external energy inputs and less cultivation and from a wider range of land than would be suited to production of fermentation feedstock. Also these industrial processes require quite a lot of electricity – something NZ is not over-endowed with – so this could be just another case of taking a simple well proven process and replacing it with a costly and complex one. I suspect cows will be round for a while yet. Though for specialist protein production it is no doubt a technology NZ needs to be on top of."

and the second is from Bruce Chippindale -

"Whether this specific set of innovations leads to the next destruction of our economic monoculture is questionable. The existence of the economic monoculture means it *will* ultimately face destruction—again. New Zealand has embraced an absurdly exaggerated interpretation of Ricardo’s “comparative advantage” and faces the consequences, no, it ENDURES the consequences, every day.

“We can’t make anything ourselves; the market is too small.” So we export logs and import plywood and furniture. We export apples and import applesauce.

And we create a primary-industry/monoculture economic dependence, robbing ourselves of economic and political independence. We need greater autarky and less need to make “trade deals” that provide greater advantage to some, and less advantage to everyone else, in both nations."

7) For much of 2025, it felt like the climate movement in New Zealand was losing. 

This opinion piece from Newsroom is written by Lawyers for Climate Change executive director, Jessica Palairet. I, for one, am very thankful that groups such as this exist and that they challenge the government regarding their inadequate climate action.

Here is an extract from Jessica's piece - 

"The government cut climate policy after climate policy – from transport, to our domestic 2050 methane target, to companies’ emissions reporting obligations. Rather than focusing on reducing emissions, the government seemed focused on reducing litigation risk, weakening our once-bipartisan climate laws.
The government’s timing was often brazen. Less than a week after the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, said that granting fossil fuel exploration licences or providing fossil fuel subsidies “may constitute an internationally wrongful act”, New Zealand reopened offshore oil and gas exploration – and announced a new $200 million subsidy, to boot. 

I am executive director of Lawyers for Climate Action, a charity bringing together 400 lawyers and members across Aotearoa to ensure meaningful action on climate change through strategic litigation and law reform. Driving our work is the concern that New Zealand isn’t doing enough on climate change – and that it’s in our interests as a country, as well as in the interests of future generations, to do better. 

In 2026, I hope New Zealand takes its climate obligations more seriously and demonstrates real leadership on climate change. The scientific imperative to protect our planet couldn’t be clearer,and increasingly, so too is the economic imperative." 

8) The LNG terminal and meeting the Electricity needs of NZ.

I've put this item into the newsletter because I've seen several articles discussing the question of whether a LNG terminal is the best solution to the issue of "Dry Year" electricity supplies. I believe the question cannot be adequately answered without a full analysis of what works and what doesn't work with our current power network. So here's some food for thought and some ideas to consider.

The first article published in Stuff is from Sir Ian Taylor. He presents reasons why a LNG terminal may well not be the smartest idea and offers thoughts on how we could do things differently that don't tie us into international energy market volatility in the years ahead. Anyone who believes as I do that those markets are going to become more and more unpredictable will see the logic of his arguments. 

"Electrification is not a slogan. It is a practical economic strategy.

When a farm replaces diesel irrigation pumps with electric ones, its operating costs fall. When a factory replaces fossil-fuel boilers with electric process heat, its exposure to global fuel prices disappears. When transport shifts from imported fuel to domestic electricity, more of the energy dollar stays in New Zealand.

That is not ideology. It is arithmetic.

But electrification does not mean building ever larger power stations and stringing ever more transmission lines across the country. That approach is expensive, slow, and ultimately paid for by consumers. The smarter path is to use the system we already have more efficiently.

Fast-track distributed electricity generation. Solar on homes. Solar on farms. Solar on commercial buildings. Batteries that allow that energy to be stored and shared locally. Use the existing lines to move electricity within communities, rather than relying solely on large, centralised generation feeding power across long distances.

The cheapest electricity is the electricity you don’t have to move.

Every kilowatt generated where it is used is one that does not need to be transmitted across the country. That reduces losses. It reduces strain on the grid. And it reduces the need for expensive new transmission infrastructure that ultimately pushes power prices higher.

This is not theoretical. It is already happening."

The second article from the Spinoff titled "Big costs, big profits: the state of the electricity sector in 2026" is written by Shanti Mathias and gives "a quick guide to what’s happening in the sector, and who’s paying for it."

The third contribution comes from an opinion posted on the Rewiring Aotearoa online chat group from David. He has done a good job of distilling some of the main issues around what he calls "The Line Charge Smokescreen". I do recommend downloading this document. It's a useful resource if you wish to have a better understanding of the dynamics of the NZ electricity system from a consumer's perspective.

To give you a taste here are the headings in his short paper -

• The "Powering Homes" Mirage: Where the Renewables Actually Go.
• The Structural Rot: An Oligopoly Designed for Profits. 
• The Regulatory Capture: Lobbying by Design. 
• The Expose: What is Really Happening? 

The fourth contribution was published on "the point" website in Australia and is from Ketan Joshi. His two articles are focussed on LNG in the Australian context but there is much to learn for NZ, in particular in regard to the part that batteries are playing in changing the game in Australia. 

The core case for gas plummets into a screaming death spiral - Part 1 AND Part 2

"For decades, fossil fuel advocates have been pushing the line that we “need” to burn methane as a ‘vital component of the energy transition’. It is an ancient talking point, predicated on the idea that integrating wind and solar power can only be done by using fossil methane-fuelled turbines, which can be turned up and down with some degree of flexibility and adjustability. 

A report by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) shows that gas now spends a lower percentage of the time “setting” the price of electricity (that is: being the final bidder in the real-time electricity auctions that the system relies on. The final bidder wins the right to set the broad price for that interval). This has the effect of directly bringing down the price everybody pays for electricity, simply because gas has been so cripplingly expensive, and that expense has been the primary driver of rising electricity prices over the past few years (particularly in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine).  

To debunk the idea Australia “needs” gas to help wind and solar, I usually refer to the grid operator’s models of the future power sector, which shows full reliability and skyrocketing wind and solar alongside plummeting gas consumption. The objection to this has always been that it is a model of the future, not measured reality. We are well and truly in the demonstration phase of the long-overdue death of power sector fossil gas.

We have already had a good year of data from California, where batteries have enabled the state’s massive solar growth and taken a massive chunk out of gas, resulting in California being the only state in 2025 in the US with falling emissions. Australia is now formally having its California moment. While gas power hasn’t been erased from the grid, it has taken a massive and unprecedented hit, thanks to a battery boom that is unlocking the power of new Australian wind and solar." 

The NZ government's argument that by importing fossil LNG, electricity prices will come down is highly debatable. If we accepted that the climate crisis is real and impacting us all right now then wouldn't we do everything possible to reduce our fossil fuel use. We should be looking forward, not back into the past for the solutions to our power needs. If we look to Australia, who are further along on the path of using batteries to help meet peak loads, it's the price setting of the final bidder in the real-time electricity auctions referred to above that ensures power generators can make huge profits, as long as they always have a small component of expensive generation providing that last small proportion of required supply. There seems to be a good argument that batteries are doing a better job in Australia of lowering that final bidder price than fossil gas. I see no reason why this wouldn't also apply here in NZ.  

9) How do we reform the electricity market? Why can't we get three free hours a day like the Australians?

Lesley and I are fairly regular watchers online of the discussions and presentations hosted by The NZ Fabians Society. They have a session scheduled for March 23rd with guests Geoff Bertram and Scott Willis. I've been interested in Geoff's perspective since the 1980's and anticipate that he will have a lot to offer on this topic, of which he is very knowledgeable.

Here is some brief info about the session.

"Yes, the neoliberal changes begun under Roger Douglas saw electricity shift from a state-run system working for the public good, to a competing market run for short-term corporate profit. Geoff Bertram and Scott Willis look at how we can change the current system to stop prices for us consumers continuing to escalate, and to build a decentralized network especially with wind and solar. Meanwhile our Coalition government has rejected 8 of the top 10 recommendations in the recent review of the sector by Frontier Economics and instead doubled down on fossil fuels.

Check out this report.

Across the ditch, Aussie PM Anthony Albanese is offering all households three free hours of electricity a day, starting in July.
Why have we got things so wrong?

Geoff Bertram is currently Visiting Scholar at Vic Uni and earlier was Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics and Finance.  He continues to publish extensively – see his website https://geoffbertram.com/

Scott Willis is a Green MP and party spokesperson on energy. He previously worked as an energy consultant and as general manager of Blueskin Energy.

The session will be chaired by lawyer and journalist Ollie Neas."

You can subscribe to The NZ Fabians Society and get notice of their talks or you can go to their website and watch recordings of them. 

INTERNATIONAL

10) ‘The dinosaurs didn’t know what was coming, but we do’: Marina Silva on what needs to follow Cop30.

Item number 6 in the November newsletter linked to an article in The Conversation about the COP30 talks held in Brazil last year and highlighted this cynical move by the NZ government - "Delinking the Emissions Trading Scheme – one of the few remaining policy tools for cutting domestic emissions – from the country’s Paris Agreement pledge constructs a pathway for the government to abandon its international obligations, while remaining compliant with domestic law." 

To follow that up I've shared this Guardian article in which Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva talks about climate inaction and the course we have to plot to save ourselves and the planet.

"The power of extractivist economic interests to delay and reverse climate action has also been apparent in Brazil. Congress, which is dominated by agribusiness interests, overturned several of Lula’s vetoes of a controversial bill to dilute environmental licensing just days after Cop30.

Given these forces, how could governments ever push forward progressive policies on the climate and nature? For Marina, it is necessary to go to a deeper level of values. Ultimately, she said, it is a matter of survival – not just of an individual or a species, but the very conditions in which life is possible.

Compared with the huge efforts to preserve the economic system after the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, and the immense military spending under way in Europe, it was incredible how little was going into the campaign to stabilise the climate and nature, she said. “Something is wrong. And it’s not just wrong with the dynamics of multilateralism. It’s wrong with the ethical values ​​that are guiding our decisions.

“Recently we moved to confront the problem of Covid-19. Why are we only able to do this when the harm has already been done? Why don’t we show that ability when the problem has been detected and proven and already sending us its most malevolent ambassadors in the form of fires, heatwaves, ever-more-intense typhoons and hurricanes, loss of areas that were previously used to produce food and reduction in hydroelectric power generation capacity?

“The visits of these sinister ambassadors should be enough for us to make preparations in a way the dinosaurs were unable to do. They didn’t know a large meteor was coming towards them. We know what is coming towards us, we know what needs to be done and we have the means to do it, yet we don’t take the necessary measures.”

Marina is planning to do all she can to change that. The Brazilian government will push forward with a debate on roadmaps to halt deforestation and fossil fuels. It will participate in the first international conference on a just transition away from oil, coal and gas in Colombia next year.

And it will try to lead by example, she says. “I am inspired by the fact we have reduced deforestation by 50% in the Amazon and agribusiness has grown by 17% in the last three years. This demonstrates it is possible to do this,” she said. “If we are not determined to achieve, we will apparently remain in the same place. And I say apparently because we are already heading towards an unthinkable place, where the very conditions of life are diminished.”

11) We discovered microbes in bark ‘eat’ climate gases. This will change the way we think about trees.

This is fascinating stuff. It would be interesting to know how comparable NZ native forest trees are to the Australian trees they've used in their research?

"We all know trees are climate heroes. Now, for the first time, our research has uncovered the hidden world of the tiny organisms living in the bark of trees. We discovered they are quietly helping to purify the air we breathe and remove greenhouse gases.

These microbes “eat”, or use, gases like methane and carbon monoxide for energy and survival. Most significantly, they also remove hydrogen, which has a role in super-charging climate change. What we discovered has changed how we think about trees. Bark was long assumed to be largely biologically inert in relation to climate. But our findings show it hosts active microbial communities that influence key atmospheric gases. This means trees affect the climate in more ways than we previously realised."

The whole article is available on The Conversation website.

12) Another El Nino Already? What Can We Learn from It?

For those readers of this newsletter who like to keep up to date with James Hansen's research, and can handle some in-depth scientific analysis, he has recently posted on his blog the following.  

Abstract. The world seems headed into another El Nino, just 3 years after the last one. Such quick return normally would imply, at most, an El Nino of moderate strength, but we suggest that even a moderately strong El Nino may yield record global temperature already in 2026 and still greater temperature in 2027. The extreme warming will be a result mainly of high climate sensitivity and a recent increase of the net global climate forcing, not the result of an exceptional El Nino, per se. We find that the principal drive for global warming acceleration began in about 2015, which implies that 2°C global warming is likely to be reached in the 2030s, not at midcentury.

You can read or download the full blog from his website.

13) ‘Reimagining matter’: Nobel laureate invents machine that harvests water from dry air.

This article in The Guardian caught my attention. I was encouraged to read about Omar Yaghi’s invention, which uses ambient thermal energy and can generate up to 1,000 litres of clean water every day. The invention uses a type of science called reticular chemistry to create molecularly engineered materials, which can extract moisture from the air and harvest water even in arid and desert conditions.

I was encouraged because I am very aware that the water resources of large areas of our planet are in a state of collapse, as documented in two other recent articles.

Era of ‘global water bankruptcy’ is here, UN report says.

"On Tuesday the UN announced that the world had entered a state of water bankruptcy where deterioration of some water resources had become permanent and irreversible. Prof Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water Environment and Health, said poor management of water is frequently the main cause of bankruptcy and that climate breakdown is seldom the sole reason: “Climate change is like a recession on top of bad management of business.”

The World Bank Group has also been sounding the alarm. Global freshwater reserves have plunged sharply over the past 20 years, according to the group, which says the planet is losing about 324bn cubic metres of freshwater every year, enough to meet the annual needs of 280 million people, or roughly the population of Indonesia. The losses affect major river basins on every continent."

AND - Half the world’s 100 largest cities are in high water stress areas, analysis finds.

"Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 38 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.

Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown."

14) Scottish Parliament Votes to Advance Ecocide Bill.

Here is an update on the continuing introduction of Ecocide law in different countries around the world. Can you imagine the current NZ government taking this step? 

"The Scottish Parliament has voted to advance the Ecocide (Scotland) Bill, placing Scotland on track to become the first UK nation to criminalise severe environmental destruction.
Scotland’s move comes amid accelerating global momentum for ecocide law. At the international level, Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa, now joined by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, submitted a formal proposal in September 2024 to amend the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to recognise ecocide as a standalone international crime. More recently, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has adopted a new policy placing environmental destruction and climate-related harm at the centre of its prosecutorial priorities. The African Ministerial Conference on the Environment has also made ecocide law a priority for 2025–2027.

Regionally, the European Union’s Environmental Crime Directive, which includes offences ‘comparable to ecocide’, must be transposed into national law across Member States by May 2026. The Council of Europe’s Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, which includes ecocide-level offences, opened for signature in December 2025 and has already been signed by the European Union, Luxembourg, Portugal, Latvia and Moldova. Nationally, Belgium and France have established domestic ecocide laws, with legislation advancing in Italy, Brazil, the Netherlands, Ghana, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, French Polynesia and India."

You can learn more on the "Stop Ecocide International" website.

I've also included this extract from a conversation with Stop Ecocide International’s CEO Jojo Mehta on the topic of "Criminalizing Ecocide". 

GJIA (Georgetown Journal of International Affairs): "Given the role of corporate actors in large-scale environmental destruction, what approaches have been most effective for engaging private-sector actors in ecocide discussions?"

JM (Jojo Mehta): "In recent years, we have seen, unsurprisingly, growing engagement from the sustainable business sector. Companies that have long invested in responsible practices have been at a disadvantage, because typically money flows towards the cheapest and most environmentally harmful operations. Ecocide law represents a major leveling of the playing field. It ensures that whatever business you are in, your activities must not cause severe environmental harm. Those already operating sustainably are therefore better positioned because they have been preparing for this standard.

What has been particularly interesting is the response from the investment world. For several consecutive years, the International Corporate Governance Network submitted statements to the UN Climate Conferences advising governments to legislate for ecocide. They recognize that environmental degradation is a risk factor. In an increasingly volatile world, investors need to know that their capital will still hold value ten years from now. A company engaged in severe environmental harm represents future liability.

Criminalizing ecocide carries a different weight in the corporate world than regulatory law. Much of existing environmental law is highly technical, detailed, and prescriptive. In practice, companies that can afford it often learn to navigate or manipulate those rules. Effectively, if there is a category of something that is not supposed to be done, then they will recategorize that activity. If the regulation sets an emissions limit, companies will push or just consistently operate at the upper limit.

Criminal law forces decision-makers to ask, before signing off on a major project: is this going to create severe harm? And if so, could I be personally criminally liable? That question is a powerful deterrent. It prompts executives to seek alternative approaches or establish clear operational boundaries. Additionally, the accusation of criminal behavior can damage both a leader’s personal reputation and the company’s value. Stock prices can fall immediately. There is a rational deterrence provided by the criminal aspect that simply does not exist in the regulatory sphere.

We urgently need a taboo around the mass destruction of nature. So, normalizing the language of ecocide contributes to building that cultural boundary.

Overall, developments are moving twice as quickly as we could have predicted. We expect that within five years, most of the world will either be adopting, progressing, or seriously considering ecocide law. What feels hopeful is how basic and common-sense the principle is. Some people say ecocide law is a response to the climate and ecological crisis; we tend to see it the other way around. The crisis exists because this law was not established 50 years ago. Ecocide law is a foundational piece that should always have been there, and now is simply the time to put it in place."

15) Inequality on Planet Earth.

I wanted to finish with two items highlighting the huge difference between the super-rich and most of the rest of humanity and the impact those super-rich are having on our collective future. 

"At the root of all our problems stands one travesty: politicians’ surrender to the super-rich."

"There is one political problem from which all others follow. It is the major cause of Donald Trump, of Nigel Farage, of the shocking weakness of their opponents, of the polarisation tearing societies apart, of the devastation of the living world. It is simply stated: the extreme wealth of a small number of people.

It can also be quantified. The World Inequality Report (WIR) 2026 shows that about 56,000 people – 0.001% of the global population – corral three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. They afflict almost every country. In the UK, for example, 50 families hold more wealth than 50% of the population combined.

It is the ultra-rich who benefit most from destruction, in making money and in spending it. The WIR shows that the richest 1% of the world’s population account for 41% of greenhouse gas emissions arising from private capital ownership: almost twice that of the bottom 90%. And through their consumption, another study shows, the 1% produce as many greenhouse gases as the poorest two-thirds."

Check out the full article from the indomitable George Monbiot. 

17) In Davos, the rich talk about ‘global threats’. Here’s why they’re silent about the biggest of them all - Ingrid Robeyns

How refreshing to have someone talking total common sense and telling it as it is, rather than obfuscating and avoiding the obvious! Note the reference in the article to Luke Kemp's book, "Goliath's Curse". I read this book recently and found it fascinating. I've included some info about it in the final item below. 

"This week, hundreds of government leaders, heads of state, and business executives are gathering at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. They will be discussing solutions to the world’s biggest risks and problems.

But everything suggests that, once more, what will not be addressed at their meeting is the biggest threat to humanity and the planet: neoliberal capitalism.

All forms of capitalism are characterised by extensive private ownership of companies as well as the primacy of the profit motive. But the specific neoliberal form of capitalism that has risen to dominance from the late 1970s onwards has additional features: the privatisation of companies previously in public ownership; a shift in power from workers to capital owners; and reduced taxes on entrepreneurs and the richest.

The transition from mixed economies under social democracies to neoliberal capitalism has led to a notable increase of wealth concentration at the top, which is now eroding (and in some places even destroying) our democracies. The absence of a sustained discussion of neoliberal capitalism in elite circles is illogical, since it is the main cause of the other problems that will be discussed at Davos.

If meetings such as the one in Davos do not even talk about capitalism, how can our leaders start to even question it? The Global Risks Report contains precisely zero references to capitalism (let alone socialism or social democracy or other relevant terms). It says nothing about the extensive knowledge that exists in academic scholarship (and beyond) about the disadvantages of capitalism and the possibilities of alternative economic systems."

18) Goliath's Curse by Luke Kemp.

"A radical retelling of human history through collapse, and what it means for our uncertain future

Why do civilisations collapse? Is human progress possible? Are we approaching our endgame?

For the first 200,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change.

As we reluctantly congregated in the first farms and cities, people began to rely on novel lootable resources like grain and fish for their daily sustenance. And when more powerful weapons became available, small groups began to seize control of these valuable commodities. This inequality in resources soon tipped over into inequality in power, and we started to adopt more primal, hierarchical forms of organization. Power was concentrated in masters, kings, pharaohs and emperors (and ideologies were born to justify their rule). Goliath-like states and empires – with vast bureaucracies and militaries – carved up and dominated the globe.

What brought them down? Whether in the early cities of Cahokia in North America or Tiwanaku in South America, or the sprawling empires of Egypt, Rome and China, it was increasing inequality and concentrations of power that hollowed these Goliaths out before an external shock brought them crashing down. These collapses were written up as apocalyptic, but in truth they were usually a blessing for most of the population.

Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible. All of us now face a choice: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the next collapse may be our last."

If this piques your interest you can borrow it from the Blenheim library.