Archive for December, 2005

• 

  Hopping off…

  
  
  
  I’m hopping off this lily pad now and will be away for Parliament’s two-week break. I will hop on to another and do posts if anything really significant comes up, but otherwise, the frog says Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and see you all back here on 9 January. read more
  December 23, 2005 12:24 pm - 4 Comments
• 

  Whale spin

  
  
  
  Three cheers for Greenpeace! Their campaign to save the whales from Japanese harpoons is to be applauded. The Greenpeace website contains some fantastic footage of Greenpeace bods taking on the Japanese whalers. One can only admire the courage and tenacity of those activists clinging to their rubber inflatables in the face of water cannons, trying to get [...] read more
  December 23, 2005 9:51 am - 8 Comments
• 

  LA tribute to Rod

  
  
  
  Check this out: It arrived at the Greens’ national office in the last couple of days. A recurring theme in discussions about Rod around here has been the realisation that he touched so many more lives than we ever knew; this is just the latest example. Seems that Rod visited California Green and former [...] read more
  December 22, 2005 12:41 pm - 3 Comments
• 

  Harvard is taking it seriously

  
  
  
  Someone should tell The Dominion Post that climate change denial is SO last century. Their editorial on the demise of the carbon tax today shows a stunning level of ostrich syndrome. They write: The whole affair is yet another example of the muddle-headed hysteria surrounding the discovery that the Earth appears to be going [...] read more
  December 22, 2005 11:53 am - 11 Comments
• 

  Fiddling while the planet burns

  
  
  
  The Government’s decision today to scrap the Carbon Tax is unfortunate in itself, but the really worrying thing is the change of thinking that it points to. What is clear from the policy review (offline) that prompted the decision is that the Government views the rise in New Zealand’s carbon emissions as inevitable and that [...] read more
  December 21, 2005 4:55 pm - 36 Comments
• 

  Wrapping up Christmas

  
  
  
  Today is December 20 and unless you’re all masochists and love being crushed by sweaty, bag-laden shoppers in the last minute Christmas shopping frenzy, all your present purchases are tucked away in the wardrobe – right? But now comes the hard part – the wrapping! This year, instead of adding to the mountains of colourful waste paper [...] read more
  December 20, 2005 3:57 pm - 10 Comments
• 

  The insurers are taking it seriously

  
  
  
  Next time you hear someone telling you that we don’t need to do anything about climate change you may want to refer them to the insurance industry. IAG is the parent company for NZI and State. It’s 2005 sustainability report ’see’ has an excellent graphic showing the cost of recent weather events in New Zealand. [...] read more
  December 20, 2005 2:23 pm - 9 Comments
• 

  Carbon emissions, consumption omission

  
  
  
  It struck me that the two high profile international summits of the last few weeks ended in much the same way. Both the climate change talks in Montreal and the trade talks in Hong Kong ended with committments to keep talking and not a lot else. Not surprisingly, whether you thought this was [...] read more
  December 20, 2005 11:51 am - 6 Comments
• 

  Festive fare pay

  
  
  
  The hospitality and tourism industries have today come out with ‘dire’ predictions that as many as 50 percent of restaurants and cafes will probably not open over on public holidays over Christmas and New Year. The reason? Well it seems that the price of paying workers time and a half and having to give them a [...] read more
  December 19, 2005 11:57 am - 21 Comments
• 

  “Good losers”

  
  
  
  Bouquet and brickbats for the Greens from the Sunday Star-Times’ Helen Bain today. In Class of 2005 – the winners, the losers we feature in both columns: WINNERS 10 THE GREENS. They got cheated out of government again, so could technically be categorised as losers. But by being such good losers, they are winners (some [...] read more
  December 18, 2005 12:51 pm - 2 Comments