This government? It is only better than National might have been.

As for the tenants demanding efficiencies and paying extra, one has to question why THEY have to front the money. They’re the ones who are unable to buy a house. They get zero tax relief and in fact are quite likely paying (collectively) for the nearly “free” house that the landlord is able to buy courtesy of the LAQC and the tax and benefits distortions hitting the middle class. If you don’t believe me, talk to an accountant.

As for the state houses, I have no idea if even houses that have received recent renovations that would’ve made some of those things easier have had it done but given my low opinion of the current government I am sure that even that little has eluded their feeble grasping for low-hanging fruit.

Truthfully the housing market in NZ is so wretchedly distorted and disordered that drawing any conclusions from it is probably an error.

respectfully BJ

In fact it is well underway in Christchurch.

There are various subsidies (and even freebees) depending on income and need (eg for the elderly). I saw one pensioner’s delight when she got insulation in ceiling and underfloor, and a state-of-the-art pellet fire installed free of charge.

Apparently many of the worst offenders who don’t upgrade are landlords.

> Most of the pollution [in Christchurch] comes from keeping the home fires burning and not from cars or industry. Perhaps Ecan needs to start using emotive language like “carbon criminals� and “open-fire and logburner addiction� to effect an attitude change amongst the smog victims

Maybe, but a significant number of the people in Christchurch who are still using this form of heating can’t afford the cost of changing. What you need to do is:
(1) ban these forms of heating, and
(2) provide financial assistance to people who can’t afford to change their form of heating, to make it possible for them to change and comply with the ban.
Then you can enforce the ban.

Log fires are only carbon-nuetral if the firewood is sustainably harvested. How much of the firewood currently being burned is coming from clearance of wind-breaks etc for dairy conversions? Now I’m genuinely curious where the firewood companies actually get their wood from.

The induced traffic effect has certainly been known for a long time. It was the basis of Sir Julias Vogel’s Immigration & Public Works Act :- Build the roads and railways and the people will come.

My original point about motorways was that congestion occurs in a more environmetally friendly way on motorways than on conventional roads because motorways allow engines to operate at fairly constant RPMs (this is one of the main techniques used in Hybrid cars). Normally this motorway advantage is lost because of the higher speed limits than on normal urban roads. During peak periods the speed difference disappers and drivers on motorways are forced to slow down and save fuel, whereas drivers on normal roads are forced to stop and start more often which wastes more fuel. In fact, on normal roads mid-block speeds may not decrease at all so the entire reduction in average speeds comes from extra waiting time at intersections, which is one reason why hybrids are at their best in this type of congestion.

I suppose my main point is if we don’t let ourselves take an holistic or systems approach to problems we are short-changing ourselves, and there is always the risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

There are two distinct, overlapping issues here :
1) Climate change due to human-induced greenhouse gases
2) Air pollution and associated health issues.

Cars are relevant to both. Mitigating traffic jams is therefore an excellent objective. Many ways of doing this : providing good public transport is good because it addresses both issues. Building more motorways might conceivably address health issues (though that is by no means obvious), but will increase greenhouse gases by encouraging more car traffic. This is a well-proven effect, as is the fact that traffic will pretty soon saturate the new roads etc. until we’re at a standstill again…

Inefficient log fires in an urban environment are relevant to air pollution, and should probably be banned, but not very relevant to climate change (carbon-neutral in themselves : didn’t you know that, Kevyn?), a slight positive if they displace gas or oil-fired heating, or oil or gas generated electricity).

Most of the pollution comes from keeping the home fires burning and not from cars or industry. Perhaps Ecan needs to start using emotive language like “carbon criminals” and “open-fire and logburner addiction” to effect an attitude change amongst the smog victims, ie. everybody else who live in Christchurch and who have switched to clean heat.

The fact that Christchurch has worse congestion than Auckland (Travel-time Survey 2006, Transit NZ) despite the major arterials carrying less traffic per lane-kilometre highlights the role that traffic disruption plays in creating traffic congestion. Grade separation of critical intersections would ease the problem in a way that would reduce emissions more than it would reduce travel times. Motorway congestion is a good way of reducing emmissions because it reduces average speeds with only minimal increase in variation from the mean. On ordinary arterials the reduction in average speeds is largely the result of the increased amount of time spent stationary and increased numbers of stop/start cycles per vehicle.

We should be taking the successful aspects of motorways and using them where they can produce immediate significant reductions in emmissions without the induced traffic effects that would be expected from building complete motorways or expressways. Most importantly replacing rounadouts with flyovers (with cycle lanes) eliminates the most inconvenient and dangerous part of most cycle commutes.

If it turns out cooling would be as disasterous a problem, and they’d be no long-term consequences to it, then yes, I’d advocate burning some fossil fuels to deal with it.

But one wonders why the Hayek extremists want to let the world go to hell without trying to counteract human-induced climate change. I guess their answer to that is : if hell is where the market is taking us, then that’s where we should be, because the market is always right.