The Hoon

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate news, including research showing the lethality of gas hobs and research on the health effects of climate change;

* Robert Patman on the US Presidential elections and Israel’s banning of UNRWA.

* Special guest Elaine Monaghan, who is a professor of practice in journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington, and contributed to Reuters coverage of Ukraine, having long been a Reuters correspondent in Moscow, Kyiv and Washington. She was also a correspondent for The Times in Washington and co-authored the 2006 book On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

Peter mentioned his article in this week’s Listener about the history of Polish refugee children in New Zealand.

Peter also mentioned a report in The Lancet on climate change and health.

Cathrine referred to the ‘real zero’ pledge in the climate news section.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate news, including another extreme climate event in the United States;

* Robert Patman on the escalating conflict between Israel, Iran and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon; and,

* Special guest Elaine Monaghan, who is a professor of practice in journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington, and contributed to Reuters coverage of Ukraine, having long been a Reuters correspondent in Moscow, Kyiv and Washington. She was also a correspondent for The Times in Washington and co-authored the 2006 book On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate news, including another extreme climate event in the United States;

* Robert Patman on the escalating conflict between Israel, Iran and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon; and,

* Special guest Dr David Galler, a former intensive care specialist at Middlemore Hospital, board member of the Health Coalition Aotearoa and author of the semi-autobiographical book Things That Matter: Stories of Life & Death.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

Bernard mentioned in the episode he interviewed former Kāinga Ora director Philippa Howden-Chapman at a public event in Auckland last Friday night. The video of that is here and below.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey & Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate news, including research suggesting a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could trigger 8° of warming in the long run;

* Robert Patman on the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, Vladimir Putin’s latest nuclear threats, Winston Peters’ comments this at the UN General Assembly;

* Matt Halliday on the 'F list' of ad and PR agencies helping fossil fuel companies in NZ. He also talked about a court case on greenwashing launched by activist Mike Smith (Guardian) and one against Z Energy by Consumer NZ, Lawyers for Climate Action and the Environmental Law Initiative. (RNZ)

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

Bernard mentioned at the beginning of the episode he would be interviewing former Kāinga Ora director Philippa Howden-Chapman at a public event in Auckland from 6.30 pm tonight. Details are here.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-host Bernard Hickey talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate news, including media coverage of extreme events and how big tech is gobbling up so much renewable power growth;

* Robert Patman on exploding pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, an exploding munitions dump deep inside Russia and an intensifying debate on Aukus; and

* Special guest CTU Chief Economist Craig Renney on Aotearoa’s deepest real per capita recession in modern times.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate science on rising temperatures and the climate implications of the US Presidential elections;

* Robert Patman and special guests Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg, the hosts of their international justice podcast Asymmetrical Haircuts;

* Special guest Vincent O’Malley, the historian and author who has published numerous books on the New Zealand Wars, including his latest, The Invasion of Waikato / Te Riri ki Tainui, via BWB.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

Long stories short, here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer:

* The month of August was 1.49˚C warmer than pre-industrial levels, tying with 2023 for the warmest August ever, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate dataset. This is despite the absence of El Niño’s heat amplifying effects that were present last year.

* The Government’s National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) plans on executing a U-turn, taking us back in time to a car-dependent past, according to University of Auckland academic Timothy Welch in The Conversation. The worst thing, he suggests, is that most of the $8 billion in planned spending will go on planning, design and preparatory work, rather than actual construction.

* Debate about whether ‘climate intellectuals’ should focus on disinformation and misinformation underestimates the political versus the technical obstacles to decarbonisation, according Aaron Regunberg in the Jacobin. The critique was ‘story of the week’ on the website skepticalscience.com, who argue that systematic climate mitigation is an inherently political matter.

* The population effects of climate displacement are causing increasing concern in the US. “When multiple cataclysmic disasters strike one region in quick succession, climate change-driven phenomena called “compounding events,” they create overlapping ripples of displacement, making the movement that much harder to track. If it was tracked in real time, local officials would see disturbing trends,” according to this gnarly tale in The Grist.

* Glaciologists are in a race to collect ancient virus specimens from fast-melting glaciers after finding 1,700 mostly new-to-science ones in Tibet. Meanwhile other scientists are coming up with massive geo-engineering plans to try to slow the collapse of the so-called Doomsday Glacier in Antarctica.

* The chart of the week is putting the terrors into gulf coast communities in the US.

(See more detail and analysis below, and in the video and podcast above. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.)

1. A dead heat in August

August 2024 has come in at +1.49˚C above pre-industrial levels, tying with 2023 for the warmest August on record, according to the Copernicus ECMWF dataset.

This means 2024 is virtually certain to break the record for hottest year ever, according to climate scientist Zeke Hausfather.

Source: Zeke Hausfather on X.com

While temperatures in August 2023 were in the grip of an El Niño, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has now been neutral for several months. That should have resulted in temperatures dropping through the back half of 2024 compared to the El Niño elevated 2023. The size of the heat anomaly has been declining, but the effect is more muted than it should be. The decline is more visible in sea surface temperatures – it helps to look at the two side-by-side:

Source: Copernicus Climate Pulse

Some countries have been sweltering through record-breaking temperatures. Japan’s hottest summer ever has produced thousands of “extreme heat” events.

“The average temperature in June, July and August was 1.76C higher than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020, the Japan meteorological agency said, according to Kyodo news agency.

It was the hottest summer since comparable records were first kept in 1898 and tied the record set in 2023, the agency said. Japan has recorded 8,821 instances of “extreme heat” – a temperature of 35C or higher – so far this year, easily beating the previous record of 6,692 set in 2023, it added.”  Source: The Guardian

Large swathes of China also experienced their hottest August ever. China has a three-tier warning system for temperatures and was issuing warnings at the highest tier (above 40˚C) for 12 consecutive days in late August.

Meantime Australia, where it is meant to still be winter, was recording temperatures in excess of 40˚C in a series of unusual winter heatwaves. It was not just the extreme temperature but the scale:

“Bureau of Meteorology maps showed a giant mass of extreme heat from near Brisbane in the east to the interior of Western Australia – a distance of about 3700km.

Data on Wednesday showed 48% of the country experienced maximum temperatures in the hottest 1% on record for August.

Nadine D’Argent, a climatology specialist at the bureau, said there were several “wow moments” as the temperature data came in.

“Seeing 40C in August is quite rare. We generally don’t see that until late September but we’ve had 16 instances where temperatures have gone above 40C.”” Source: The Guardian

2. The land transport U-turn taking us back to the past

The Government’s evidence-free National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) plans on executing a U-turn and taking us back to a car-dependent past, according to University of Auckland academic Timothy Welch in The Conversation.

The problem – well, one of the problems - is that our driver, Simeon Brown, hasn’t looked over his shoulder for following traffic, or at the dashboard for useful statistics, before attempting to execute the manoeuvre. 

The $8 billion price tag, Welch points out, won’t actually build anything for decades. The massive price tag is for planning, design and preparatory work (presumably headed for the pockets of some much-maligned contractors) rather than actual construction.

“The approach effectively commits billions in taxpayer dollars to preparatory work without delivering any tangible infrastructure improvements. New Zealanders will likely find themselves stuck in worsening traffic, waiting for highways that may never materialise.

These projects could easily be sidelined by future budget constraints or changing political priorities. A growing recognition of induced demand – where new roads generate more traffic rather than alleviate congestion – and the looming challenges of climate change risk these carbon-intensive projects being obsolete before they even begin.

Meanwhile, projects that could address far more severe congestion in the main cities are being cut back or indefinitely postponed.” Source: The Conversation.

On the one hand, there is hope that these backward looking, demand-inducing “asphalt aspirations” will melt before our eyes, with some good sense materialising before they do. On the other hand, nobody gets what they want anymore (credit to Marlon Williams Music). Read it, or sing it, and weep.

3. Fighting Climate disinformation the urgent priority

A debate about the value of focusing effort on fighting climate disinformation (and misinformation) has been bubbling quietly in climate circles this week after an article by Holly Buck appeared in Jacobin, followed swiftly by a powerful critique from Aaron Regunberg.

Buck claims that the amount of attention currently being placed on climate misinformation is creating a sizeable distraction, particularly in the US, from the funding that is landing on the ground courtesy of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

‘Climate intellectuals’ ought to be focusing on efforts on the ground, knitting together the people working on resilience, and creating a narrative story that fuels motivation, Buck claims, instead of waging a “an information war focused on uncovering what Big Oil knew and policing speech.” Her assumption is that such climate disinformation does little to curtail climate action.

But Regunburg suggests …

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest climate science on rising temperatures and the debate about how to responde to climate disinformation;

* Robert Patman and special guest Helen Clark on the latest from Gaza and AUKUS, plus Helen Clark on the moves to restrict iwi claims on the Foreshore and Seabed; and,

* Special guest Caroline Shaw, Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington, who has just written an Op-Ed in The Conversation on research about the health benefits of cycling.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard

Long stories short, here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer:

* The Government announced changes to the Fast-Track Approvals Bill on Sunday, backing off from the contentious proposal to give final say on development projects to just three government Ministers. Instead they now propose to allow the expert panel (selected by a government-appointed convenor) to make the final determinations. That change may appear substantive, but critics argue that it is a classic 'bait and switch'.

* In the wake of this, we ask whether the standard ‘public submissions’ approach to such powerful legislation does sufficient service to deliberative democracy? What would a genuinely responsive consultation process look like?

* Academics James Dyke, Robert Watson and Wolfgang Knorr deconstruct climate double-speak in this must read article in The Conversation UK. They argue that the concept of ‘overshoot’ and the ‘net zero’ Paris approach are increasingly detached from reality and have become more like science fiction.

* A new global stocktake study evaluated 1500 climate policies implemented over the last 25 years identified just 63 successful interventions. Collectively, these policies reduced emissions by between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) We emit over 35 billion tonnes globally every year.

* In NZ chart of the week, there’s a startling look at actually how much gross emissions are expected to fall here, and where the real burden lies; and,

* In global graphic of the week, there’s a new type of climate stripes.

(See more detail and analysis below, and in the video and podcast above. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.)

1. Ministerial override removed - but watch for the ‘bait & switch’

On Sunday, the coalition government announced five proposed changes to Fast-Track legislation in response to public submissions.

The headline change dilutes the concentration of power whereby three government ministers were to have the final say over development projects, with power to overrule an expert panel. Under the new proposal, the expert panel will have the final say.

While some critics are satisfied that their concerns have been heard, others are pointing to the landing of a predicted bait and switch, as Fox Meyer reports;

“On the first day of oral submissions for the fast-track bill, Forest & Bird’s chief executive Nicola Toki warned of a bait and switch: “Removal of ministerial override is meaningless unless environmental protections and public participation in existing legislation is retained. I want to make that really clear: that can’t be the only thing.” 

Other submitters pointed to legal vulnerabilities, Treaty obligations and a lack of environmental provisions as their chief concerns.“ Newsroom

The overarching aim of the bill is to facilitate economic development, but the failure to include any environmental consideration in the Bill’s framing was highlighted during oral submissions, including by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton, whose concise and impactful submission you may recall.

Upton said the bill posed “significant risks to the environment”, comparing it to the Muldoon government’s similar – and deeply unpopular – legislation: “Even the much-maligned National Development Act 1979 had more environmental checks and balances.” Upton didn’t hold back, writing that the bill would “achieve sub-optimal outcomes through poor decision-making, poor allocation of resources, a lack of legislative durability, and increased litigation risk.” The Spinoff

Beyond scrapping the role of ministers as final decision-makers, and elevating environmental considerations in the process, Upton also said that project eligibility should be restricted to those that provide significant public benefits rather than private gains alone. Neither of those recommendations, nor the Auditor-General’s urging for the inclusion of better tools for managing conflict, have been meaningfully taken up.

2. Is the public submissions approach fit for purpose?

The Fast-Track Bill attracted a high number of submissions, some 27,000 from individuals and organisations.

However, a recent study of submissions to the Auckland 2050 plans showed huge demographic asymmetries (older, wealthier, Pākehā voices were loudest) .

The process is also largely one way, with no assurance that policymakers will make adjustments that are in any way scaled to the size or seriousness of the public response.

Koi Tū, The Centre for Informed Futures, housed at the University of Auckland, has been looking at alternative models for holding complex public conversations, resulting in this analysis for the International Public Policy Observatory (IPPO). The role of citizen assemblies in complex decision-making is growing internationally and has seen some early success here.  

Where the current coalition Government shows no sign of deepening public involvement in policymaking (rather, the opposite), we see enormous potential for a broad expansion in the number and types of public conversations we have about complex issues ahead of the next election, but we desperately need to equip people with the tools and opportunities to have them.

3. Time to get real

On the subject of critical conversations – there is a ‘must read’ one in The Conversation UK this week on the overshoot myth.

Academics James Dyke, Robert Watson and Wolfgang Knorr use plain language to address the dissolution of the Paris Agreement’s aims into failed framings designed to ‘work-around’ the need to reduce fossil fuel use, the failure of any country to strengthen its pledges at the last three COPs while emissions continued to grow, the warning signs we have ignored including the record temperatures over the past two years (that we cannot fully explain) and the looming threat of failing natural carbon sinks and climate tipping points. Instead, we have implicitly accepted overshoot scenarios that rely on science fiction solutions to rectify the situation sometime in the future.

“It’s clear that the commitments countries have made to date as part of the Paris agreement will not keep humanity safe while carbon emissions and temperatures continue to break records. Indeed, proposing to spend trillions of dollars over this century to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, or the myriad other ways to hack the climate is an acknowledgement that the world’s largest polluters are not going to curb the burning of fossil fuels.

Direct Air Capture (DAC), Bio Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), enhanced ocean alkalinity, biochar, sulphate aerosol injection, cirrus cloud thinning – the entire wacky races of carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering only makes sense in a world of failed climate policy.” The Conversation UK.

The article cuts through climate double-speak to debunk claims such as Exxon’s call to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) to produce net zero hydrogen from fossil fuels, pointing to the recent exposure of industry-wide greenwashing on CCS. They also highlight the folly of relying on large-scale BECCS in IPCC pathways that stay below 2˚C, despite clear evidence that it would have very “adverse effects on biodiversity, and food and water security given the large amounts of land that would be given over to fast growing monoculture tree plantations.” As we reported last week, the burning of biomass appears to be increasing carbon dioxide em…

The podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers on Thursday night features co-hosts Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale talking about the week’s news with:

* The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer on the latest science of changing sea temperatures and which emissions policies actually work;

* Robert Patman on the latest from Ukraine, Gaza and AUKUS II;

* Journalist and author Aaron Smale talking about his book just published by BWB called: Tairāwhiti: Pine, Profit and the Cyclone, and his work covering abuse in state care.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was recorded on Thursday night during a live webinar for over 120 paying subscribers and was produced by Simon Josey.

(This is a sampler for all free subscribers and anyone else who stumbles on it. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, we’re able to spread my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction other public venues. Join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments, and by subscribing in full.)

Ngā mihi nui.

Bernard