The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

TL;DR: In this week’s wrap of climate news, Bernard Hickey and Cathrine Dyer talk about new research on the role of clouds in climate sensitivity suggesting very-fast warming ahead, how falling ice coverage of the Great lakes is creating heavier cloud cover linked to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and the potential silver lining of “apocalyptic optimism.”

* Non-stop cloud cover over the Great Lakes region of North America is causing psychologists to fear for the mental health of the 34 million people who live in the area. The extra cloud cover is related to declining ice formation on the Great Lakes, down 71% between 1973 and 2010.

* SAD (or Seasonal Affective Disorder) doesn’t even begin to cover the issues that arise when clouds are added to climate models. Data from cloud studies has been causing some of the climate models used by IPCC scientists to run hot for the past five years.

* Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explores the issue on her Youtube channel Science Without the Gobbledygook, explaining how it relates to Hansen et al.’s (2023) paper Global Warming in the Pipeline.

* Don’t despair, disaster is near! That’s the message from this Times article ‘Apocalyptic Optimism could be the Antidote for Climate Fatalism’. Professor Dana Fisher suggests that, in the absence of widespread policymaking leadership, a mass mobilisation of society, or ‘AnthroShift’, may be driven by a series of climate shocks in which personal and economic risks reach a critical threshold.

* Social tipping points are increasingly the subject of research, including this work by Professor Tim Lenton.

* A study featured in Carbon Brief considers the risks associated with high land-based deployments of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies (which include CCS) in the future. They found that biodiversity loss and risks to food security, freshwater availability and human rights kick in earlier than previously assumed and suggest limitations be placed on its use (these are currently exceeded by Paris-aligned 1.5˚C pathways used by the IPCC).

* We say that society is being manouvered into pursuing a morally questionable course that shifts risks from rich to poor and from current to future generations, while amplifying overall risks for everyone. A choice to pursue a high carbon removal path over a demand reduction-led path to a swift energy transition will quite literally sacrifice people for profit in coming decades.

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. See more detail below of the summaries above.

‘Clouds got in my way’

Cloud cover has been increasing during winters for the 34 million residents of the Great Lakes region in North America, causing psychologists to fear for their mental health. Stephen Starr, writing for the Guardian, does a great job of threading together a set of studies showing the effect that climate change is having in reducing ice formation on the Great Lakes, which can then lead to an increase in precipitation and cloud cover, which reinforce heating and further reduce ice. Due to the challenges in simulating clouds in models, it is proving difficult for scientists to conclude definitively that future winters will be cloudier, although that is likely to be the case.

“The possible direction of causality (linking climate change to increased cloud cover) is hard to determine because while the open lakes may have contributed to the cloudiness regionally, winter clouds also help to keep the lakes warmer than usual,” said Vavrus, the Wisconsin state climatologist.

“That said … less ice on the Great Lakes should favor more cloudiness, both locally and downstream of the lakes.”

What is certain is that the decline in ice cover over the great lakes, down 71% between 1973 and 2010, is expected to continue. Last winter, the month of January was particularly gloomy.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, saw just five minutes of sun during the first eight days of January 2023. The same month was the cloudiest January in Chicago in 129 years. At one stage, the 6.3 million people living in the greater Toronto area didn’t see the sun for more than three weeks.

This can lead to serious mental health consequences for millions of people, according to the experts.

“Seasonal affective disorder (Sad) is linked to changes in light, so cloud cover can have a significant impact on someone’s mood,” Dr Kia-Rai Prewitt, a psychologist at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, said. “People may notice they feel more depressed, have low energy, sleep more, overeat, crave carbohydrates and engage less with others, especially during the winter and fall months.”

The role that clouds play in climate systems, and the difficulties in modelling them, may have much greater consequences than a bit of SAD.

‘It’s cloud illusions I recall’'

Clouds are known to produce both heating and cooling effects – they can reflect energy from the sun back into space, resulting in cooling and they can also trap energy close to the earth’s surface, amplifying heating from the greenhouse effect.

Until 2019, the effects of clouds were not included in the major climate models. There was insufficient information, and it was assumed that the heating and cooling effects would largely cancel one another out.

A series of studies over the past decade, however, have revealed that this assumption is not correct and that clouds will likely amplify global warming.

Accordingly, in 2019, when the new cloud data was included in some of the climate models that IPCC scientists use, it produced a set of models that ran vey hot. IPCC scientists draw on a set of 50-60 models, known as CMIP (the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) when making predictions about future temperatures and it was a subset of these, ten out of 55 models, that began to run very hot in 2019. Those ten models produced much higher climate sensitivity estimates than the other models (defined as how much the temperature increases when you double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to the pre-industrial era). They were also out of alignment with what we know (or knew) about the historical, paleo climate records. The IPCC scientists concluded that the ‘hot models’ must be getting something wrong, and so they agreed that going forward, they would weight models in the combined set according to how consistent they were with the paleo climate record.

This is where things start to get interesting.

‘I don’t really know clouds at all’

Until recently, there has been a reasonably strong consensus about the paleo climate record. But Hansen et al. (2023)’s paper, ‘Warming in the Pipeline’, has produced new evidence suggesting that some periods of the historical record were hotter than is generally thought. This has significant implications for climate sensitivity. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder provides a very clear explanation about the next bit on her Youtube channel ‘Science Without the Gobbledygook’ here (the explanation about climate sensitivity begins around the 3-minute mark). It sounds so much more convincing coming from a German Physicist! As Hossenfelder points out, the assumption that cloud activity produced the same temperature results in the distant past as it does today is a big assumption that we cannot test because the dinosaurs “neglected to upload their satellite records”.

Hossenfelder goes on to discuss a study undertaken by a group of scientists from the UK Meteorology Office. The UK Met Office produces one of the ‘hot models’ and, unusually for a climate model, they are able to re-tool the model to look at short-term weather.

They tested the model, with the new cloud data and resulting higher climate sensitivity, to see how well it predicted short-term weather compared to the traditional five-day weather forecast. It improved the weather forecast, reinforcing the findings of the cloud studies and the ‘hot models’. The study was little noted at the time but is starting to attract renewed attention as the debate about climate sensitivity heats up in the field.

It is important to note here that this is an ongoing debate that will likely require a lot more evidence before the scientific consensus shifts. This is because there are also a lot of studies that reinforce the current consensus, and it will take some time for the experts to figure out why these various studies are now at odds.

‘As every fairytale comes real’

However, the implications are so profound that it seems like something that the general public might want to be aware of, in order to start mentally preparing for the possibility that it might be true.

If the climate sensitivity really is as high as these data points and studies are signalling, we are in big(ger) trouble. It would rapidly accelerate the rate at which climate change is occurring, and that is already plenty bad enough.

Hossenfelder goes on to speculate about how that might play out over the next twenty years – she suggests you only listen if your mental health is up to it. It’s not for everybody, at least not today.

An important thing to remember about any speculation regarding the future is that there is still one very important variable that has so far proven hugely unpredictable – human behaviour. It is still the case that human behaviour is driving climate change and can therefore still alter outcomes. The big question is, will it?

‘I’ve looked at love from both sides now’

In that vein, an article in The Times this week suggests that ‘Apocalyptic Optimism could be the Antidote for Climate Fatalism’.

They suggest that a solid enough dose of catastrophe might be just the ticket to wake society up and provoke an ‘AnthroShift’ (assuming, of course, that some solid disinformation campaign doesn’t manage to redirect the response, away from the asset-hoarding classes, who apparently don’t mind how long the game of life lasts, as long as they win it!).

The climate disaster that is coming is inevitable at this point, but it may also be our only hope for meaningful change. In the meantime, the best way through the climate crisis is to build strong ties within our communities, create solidarity, and cultivate social and environmental resilience capable of supporting one another and exploiting the windows of opportunity when the apocalypse arrives.

Other studies, such as this one at the University of Exeter, are searching for the moment, and the triggers, that will tip humanity into a transformational social response. Sadly, it is often some grim event that prises open the Overton Window, enabling the well-prepared to turn impossible policy into sparkling reality. C’est la vie.

‘Dreams and schemes and circus crowds’

Post COP-28, fossil fuel producing countries are already straining credulity with their interpretations of the agreed transition away from fossil fuels.

The UN warned countries to stop looking for loopholes this week after Saudi Arabia’s energy minister claimed at a conference that transitioning away from fossil fuels was just one of several choices on an ‘a la carte’ menu.

Abdulaziz bin Salman pointed at rich nations like Australia, Norway and the UK as examples of other major oil and gas producers that have no plans to stop producing with some countries, including Saudi Arabia, US and Canada, intending to increase their production of fossil fuels by 2030.

Quoted in APNews, United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said,

“Hiding behind loopholes in decision texts or dodging hard work ahead through selective interpretation would be entirely self-defeating for any government as climate impacts hammer every country’s economy and population,”

Stiell called for fewer loopholes and much more money, some $2.4 trillion for climate financing in developing countries to invest in the shift to renewable energy. To date richer countries have committed less than 5% of that figure.

Instead, they are piling investments into technologies that they hope will enable them to continue to use fossil fuels for longer.

Funding for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects doubled in 2022 compared to 2021, driven by a surge in US investment following the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Biden is currently looking to double down on this, proposing new power plant rules that would require natural gas-fired plants to install CCS technology. This is forcing other countries and regions including the EU, China, Australia and Malaysia to boost investment in order to try and hang on to their developers and capital.

Rapid growth in the technology is expected to continue. As mentioned in our pre-Christmas climate wrap, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US has been working on plans for the rapid deployment of CCS, claiming that more than half of the land area in the country is suitable for geological storage of CO2.

This is despite the fact that development of CCS technology has long lagged expectations due to both technical and financial risks and failures. These have forced the International Energy Agency (IEA) to declare the technology ‘not on track’ to deliver even a third of the modest 1.2 Gt of CO2 removals per year required in their Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) scenario. 

A Climate Analytics analysis found that large-scale deployment of CCS, combined with underperformance of the technologies could lead to excess greenhouse gas emissions of 86 million tonnes by 2050 (equivalent to more than double total global emissions in 2023).

Meantime, the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University has estimated that a high CCS pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050 is at least US$30 trillion more expensive than a low CCS pathway. They claim that:

“Using CCS to facilitate business-as-usual fossil use, even if feasible, would be highly economically damaging.” (p.3).

Why would countries actively choose a path that costs more than $1 trillion dollars extra each and every year? This is not something one would expect from an efficiently operating market system and, in fact, the market is not delivering it. Market, insurance and financial risks associated with the technology typically exceed the acceptable risk profile for private financing. Research and development of CCS is mostly being paid for, or subsidised, by governments, utilising public financing.

‘Now old friends, they’re acting strange’

One major reason for this is that powerful actors are influencing governments to protect their investments in fossil fuels and to extend the ‘business-as-usual’ paradigm for as long as possible. This misdirection of resources inflicts costs on society that will inevitably increase inequality, worsen overall welfare, delay the transition to renewable energy and weaken the overall capacity of society to tackle the complex interrelated problems that characterise the metacrisis.

The second major reason that governments are investing in CCS is because most of the IPCC’s modelled pathways to 2100 first see the world overshooting the 1.5 and 2.0˚C targets, and then bringing the temperature back down by removing CO2 from the atmosphere particularly in the back half of this century. This is referred to as ‘carbon dioxide removal’ or CDR and covers a range of nature-based and technological approaches, including bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation and reforestation (A/R). Despite these technologies already featuring in modelled pathways, there has been little by way of feasibility studies or risk assessments undertaken.

A study published this month sets out to remedy that situation, examining the risks and limitations of pathways that feature high levels of CO2 removal.

Reported by Climate Brief, the study published in the academic journal Science assesses the level of sustainability risks that would arise from a large-scale deployment of land-based CDR (carbon dioxide removal), be it nature-based or technological. The study identifies risks to biodiversity loss, food security, fresh water availability and human rights. They show that these risks are triggered at much lower levels of deployment than previously believed. They also show that many of the ‘Paris aligned’ 1.5˚C pathways used by the IPCC feature CDS deployments operating beyond the sustainability limits that their research identifies.

‘Something’s lost and something’s gained’

The costs and risks of these approaches are being ignored or downplayed in an effort to avert the necessary steep decline in near-term emissions – one that requires demand-side strategies to reduce energy and other material demands on the system.

We are increasingly running down our choices,  forcing an increased reliance on radical, speculative technologies in the future. This is also forcing us to attempt to navigate a morally questionable path that shifts risks from the rich to the poor, from current to future generations and as well, amplifies overall risk for everybody.

A choice to pursue high carbon removal paths over demand reduction paths will quite literally sacrifice people for profit over coming decades.

Despite the associated risks, our past choices and current situation mean that there is an important, limited role for CCS and CDR technologies in the future. This justifies ongoing investment in their development. However, continued misuse and misdirection of resources combined with unjustified delays in the speed of the transition to renewables amplifies the risks and increases the costs of that development.

The UN’s Simon Stiell is right – we need to accelerate financing for renewable energy in developing countries rather than continue the foolish quest for endless loopholes designed to protect business-as-usual in the global North. The global North should instead apply demand-side strategies to reduce energy demand, relaxing the steepness of the emissions decline required to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

The single most critical thing we could do to set society on the right path is to rid governments of special interest influence so that these choices start to be made on the basis of society’s overall wellbeing, both now and in the future, and not to benefit a few today, at the cost of the many.

‘From give and take, and still somehow’

President Biden paused decision making on several new LNG terminals, citing the potential impact on domestic energy costs, energy security and the environment. The review will likely delay decision-making until after the Presidential election this year.

Biden says the pause "sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time". Some environmental activists are claiming the pause as a huge victory for the climate movement, arguing that the LNG export boom is not compatible with US climate commitments and will lock-in fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come.

Others, namely the Wall Street Journal, claim the exports are necessary to support a shift away from coal in Asia and Europe and a halt could worsen climate change. A wide-ranging analysis in Carbon Brief includes this:

The IEA has stated that the wave of new LNG projects on the horizon “raises the risk of significant oversupply” as the world heads towards net-zero.

Citing Rystad Energy analysis, Semafor’s climate and energy editor Tim McDonnell noted that the world is heading towards an LNG “supply glut”, potentially rendering new US export terminals unnecessary. He said, “ if every global LNG project under consideration now were to be build, the market would be oversupplied by 2028 and for the foreseeable future after that. ”He added that, if the world does not manage to ramp up renewable energy production to the level required to tackle climate change in the coming years, the world could be undersupplied with LNG by 2030, based on currently planned projects.

Carbon Brief ends with the suggestion that Biden is also driven by election-year priorities:

Commentators noted that the Biden administration had likely made the decision in order to appeal to young people and members of the Democrat base who prioritise climate action. 

This comes as polling suggests that many young voters are turning against Biden, a trend partly attributed to his stance on the conflict in Gaza. Writing in Heatmap, editor Robinson Meyer noted that “the administration seems to be hoping a pause on LNG approvals will help reverse that dismal momentum”.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

PS: This is a difficult song about things going one way or another. I try to make it go a good way, especially for Lynn.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:

* The new National-ACT-NZ First coalition Government itself plans to accidentally and deliberately accelerate inflation via hikes in central and local Government fees and charges in the coming 18 months, which endangers its hopes for lowering mortgage rates. See Monday’s email.

* Jobs growth and wage inflation was slightly stronger than expected in the December quarter, which increased market expectations the Reserve Bank may actually start hiking the Official Cash Rate in three weeks time. See Friday’s email.

* The Government pulled around $180 million/year of public transport funding out of Auckland Council’s budget by cancelling the Auckland Fuel Levy from the end of June, but isn’t replacing the funds and now expects cuts in spending on cycleways, busways and speed bumps. See Friday’s email.

* Shock and outrage mounted over the rulings of the Independent Hearings Panel (IHP) on a new District Plan for Wellington City, which actually expand character protections on villas on the equivalent of an extra 120 rugby fields in the leafiest inner city suburbs such as Mt Victoria, Thorndon and Kelburn. See Thursday’s email and Wednesday’s email.

* Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister Simeon Brown said he wanted councils to create off-balance-sheet water authorities able to borrow tens of billions of dollars without Crown or council guarantees: a stance rejected repeatedly by ratings agencies and fund managers as too expensive and dangerous. See Wednesday’s email.

What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:

* 5.00 pm - 5.10 pm - Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about Bernard’s teeth and the debate over Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

* 5.10 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard, Peter and Cathrine Dyer talked about research on the sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and why it’s suggesting the climate may warm faster and more than the previous consensus.

* 5.25 pm - 5.45 pm - Peter, Bernard, and Robert Patman talked about the latest developments in Gaza, the Red Sea and Ukraine.

* 5.45 pm -6 pm - Peter, and Bernard spoke with Green MP Julie-Anne Genter about the IHP report on the Wellington City Council District Plan and the new Government’s decision to dump the Auckland Regional Fuel Levy without replacement funding for public transport, walking and cycling.

Cathrine mentioned this video in her discussion.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.

This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread the work from my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction around in other public venues. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments. We have a couple of special offers on at the moment.

Other places I appeared this week

I talked to Climate Fresk’s coordinator for Aotearoa Emily Mabin Sutton for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff about cutting my emissions to two tonnes per year.

We also produce this 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, which you can sign up to via Spotify and Apple and Youtube for free.

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: Shock and outrage is mounting at the rulings of the Independent Hearings Panel (IHP) on a new District Plan for Wellington City, which actually expand character protections on villas on the equivalent of an extra 120 rugby fields in the leafiest inner city suburbs such as Mt Victoria, Thorndon and Kelburn.

The panel’s rulings fly in the face of evidence in Auckland and Christchurch that increasing housing densification and supply reduces rent and house price inflation. Politicians, economists, most urban planners and housing advocates are gobsmacked and are now pleading for Wellington City Councillors to reject or rewrite the de-densification implied by the IHP’s rulings when they vote to progress the new plan on March 14.

The panel pictured below actually argued over 300 pages of reports there was no evidence they could see that more supply of land zoned for a lot more dwellings per hectare would improve affordability. They simply shrugged and wrote that housing near city centres would always be unaffordable and nothing could (or should) be done. They even ruled the Johnsonville train line was not rapid transit enough to build a lot more homes around and they rezoned areas based on the idea commuters would not be able to cycle up Wellington’s hills and therefore carparks and roads were essential.

In my view, the eight commissioners on the panel should answer these questions before that March 14 meeting of the Wellington City Council:

* Do you own a home and/or rental properties?

* How much in untaxed and leveraged capital gains on land values have you and your families made in the last 30 years from home ownership?

* Have you had to help any of your children with deposits or guarantees to buy their own homes and/or had to help them to pay rent while studying or on low incomes?

* Are any of your children or near relatives living in Australia or elsewhere because they have given up on a healthy and secure future of family home ownership in Wellington or elsewhere in Aotearoa-New Zealand?

* Have you or the firms and organisations you’ve managed had trouble recruiting young staff because of housing costs?

The same questions should be put to all the councillors making the decisions, as well as the politicians and economists commenting on the plan’s recommendations. That should including National, ACT and New Zealand First ministers professing surprise and concern over the IHP recommendations, while also moving to allow councils to opt out of densification and supporting the complaints of NIMBYs about ‘daylight robbery’ and new Kainga Ora developments ‘lowering property values.’

Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy and beyond at 9 am:

* Christchurch Mayor Phil Mauger has secured a meeting with ministers later this month to halt Christchurch’s district plan process to stop the densification ordered by the previous Labour Government via the NPS-UD and MDRS, which at one point was also supported by National, The Press-$$$’s Sinead Gill reported this morning.

* The Supreme Court ruled yesterday to overturn High Court rulings blocking iwi Leader Mike Smith’s attempts to sue Fonterra, Genesis, Dairy Holdings, NZ Steel, Z Energy, Channel Infrastructure and BT Mining for damages from their climate emissions, RNZ’s Eloise Gibson and Stuff’s Olivia Wannan report.

* Jobs growth, unemployment and wage growth figures for the December quarter were stronger than expected yesterday, raising market expectations to around 20% from nil that the Reserve Bank will hike another 25 basis points on February 28 , with a speech due next Friday morning from Governor Adrian Orr now in focus.

* Insurer Suncorp (Vero and AA Insurance) has warned the Government of higher home insurance premia and less coverage, saying that “New Zealand no longer presents only significant earthquake risk, but also significant weather risk to reinsurers,” The Post-$$$’s Rob Stock reported this morning.

* The Post-$$$ is reporting Science Minister Judith Collins has cancelled Labour Government plans for a $450 million science hub in Wellington.

* Alex Spence reports for NZ Herald-$$$ this morning from MSD OIA documents that hundreds of disadvantaged teens are now expected to spend virtually their entire working lives on a main benefit, at a cost of nearly $1 million each in future payments, according to modelling by actuaries Taylor Fry.

Full paying subscribers can read and hear more detail in my Dawn Chorus podcast above and below the paywall fold. Join our community of paying subscribers to get access to ‘Hoon’ webinars, our private chat system and be able to comment on articles. Paying subscribers also support the public interest journalism we do at The Kākā on housing affordability, climate emissions and poverty. They can request it be opened publicly.

Watching the ladder being pulled up in real time

This is how awful things actually happen in democratic societies: faceless lawyers, accountants, planners and bureaucrats change the rules in a committee and then issue a doorstop of a report that few read or understand, but which circumscribes the choices of generations for decades.

They’re not being evil or deliberate in causing the mountains of pain and expense that these decisions unleash. They’re responding to decades of political, cultural and legislative messages and practices they consider normal and, shockingly, good.

The Wellington City Council District Plan IHP panel’s report(s) from these commissioners are already being seen as a landmark for being completely out of touch with the problems in our society and on our planet.

Here’s how The Post-$$$’s Tom Hunt reported the reaction today:

Recommendations that would give character housing protection to the equivalent of more than 200 rugby fields in Wellington are seen as a kick in the guts by a housing advocate.

A panel of independent experts is advising Wellington City councillors as they look at revising the city’s district plan — essentially the city’s rule book.

The Independent Hearing Panel’s latest recommendations suggest a dramatic increase in the areas given protection from housing intensification — or apartment blocks — in order to preserve their character.

Under the recommendations, most Wellington suburbs will get a larger area of character protection. However, the eastern Wellington suburb of Kilbirnie is earmarked for greater intensification.

“They really do fly in the face of evidence,” he said.

It is the latest in a long-running debate in the capital, where there is already a housing crisis and an extra 50,000 to 80,000 new residents are expected in the coming 30 years. The debate is roughly split between those who don’t want apartment blocks in existing suburbs, and the so-called YIMBYs (yes, in my back yarders) who favour intensification over sprawling green field developments. The Post-$$$’s Tom Hunt

The reaction reported via BusinessDesk-$$$’s Dileepa Fonseka was just as shocked and appalled in its tone, although a couple of those ‘shocked’ by the decision (National’s Chris Bishop and ACT’s Cameron Luxton) have only themselves to blame by prevaricating on their apparent support for more housing supply and enabling NIMBY objections to densification.

The Greens’ infrastructure spokeswoman and MP for Rongotai, Julie Anne Genter, slammed the assessment. "It's just the most absurd statement I've ever heard that increasing the supply of housing will not affect affordability,” she said. “It's like saying there is no evidence the earth is round."

Labour's Wellington issues spokeswoman Ayesha Verrall called it bizarre. Genter said increasing zoned capacity and the supply of houses had been shown to have held back rent increases in Auckland after the unitary plan was put in place – even if the new buildings enabled through upzoning changes had been expensive initially.

The IHP report referenced evidence suggesting there was more than enough capacity provided for in the plan change and said it wasn't clear that existing constraints were the cause of housing affordability problems. However, Genter said cities needed to zone for roughly three times as much housing capacity as forecast population growth to make a dent in affordability.  BusinessDesk-$$$’s Dileepa Fonseka

ACT ‘bufuddled and bewildered’

Act’s infrastructure spokesman, Cameron Luxton, was as befuddled by the report as his counterpart in the Greens.

"It’s clear the IHP report is lacking some economic sense," Luxton said. "While there are multiple factors at play, all else being equal, it’s economics 101 that an increase in the supply of something will lead to a greater affordability.

“Economies of scale mean upzoning in areas with existing infrastructure, such as through intensification, can involve lower infrastructure costs than growing out into new places.” BusinessDesk-$$$’s Dileepa Fonseka

In my view, ACT is talking out of both sides of its mouth by insisting on Councils being able to opt out of densification, while also saying the only solution to the housing crisis is more housing supply. Its argument can be summed up as: ‘we want lots more houses built, but just somewhere not near our supporters, and they shouldn’t have to pay for it.’

ACT has been a vocal critic of the medium density rules, a supply-side response to the housing crisis that allows three homes up to three-storeys high on most sites in tier 1 cities. 

The party has put forward a range of arguments against the directive, including concerns about infrastructure in existing suburbs being unsuited for density. Some people wouldn’t want to live in dense housing developments, Luxton said, and councils needed to ensure they were zoned for the type of housing people wanted.

“That can involve significant infrastructure costs, but the provision of such infrastructure is a core function for councils,” he said. “If they want to penny-pinch, they should look at winding back lower-priority spending in other areas.” BusinessDesk-$$$’s Dileepa Fonseka

National’s tears also appear crocodile-ish.

Housing minister Chris Bishop also appeared to disagree with the assertion from the IHP about extra supply not improving affordability. 

"Wellington has a housing crisis, and restrictive zoning rules are a big part of the problem,” Bishop said he expected to make an announcement soon regarding government plans to make the medium density residential standards (MDRS) optional, and to make councils zone for 30 years’ of supply, something a number of major councils say they have already done.

The notified plan change put forward by Wellington City Council, which provides for significantly more zoned housing capacity, incorporates upzoning directives in the national policy statement on urban development (NPS-UD) and the MDRS. BusinessDesk-$$$’s Dileepa Fonseka

Chart of the day

A chart to chill the bones of wine marketers

Quote of the day

Hope for a generation evaporates

“We are all at our wits’ end,” City for People spokesperson Luke Somervell via The Post-$$$ after reading the Wellington IHP recommending EXPANDING character protection of Wellington’s villas to 206 hectares (the equivalent of more than 200 rugby fields) from 85 hectares in the draft plan.

Cartoons of the day

Anyone listening?

Self awareness Trump style

Timeline cleansing pic of the day

Abundance in the Gulf

Ka kite ano

Bernard

PS: Thanks to all the subscribers who corrected my Cabbage Tree error yesterday. They were Yuccas. My subscribers are often better informed than me on plant identification. Pretty sure they are bananas above though.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

A year on from Cyclone Gabrielle and devastating Anniversary Day floods in Auckland, the new Government and councils remain mired in a pass-the-parcel and make-it-up-as-they-go-along approach to preparing for and responding to climate-change-driven weather catastrophes.

Owners of thousands of now-unliveable homes remain stranded between councils, insurers and the Government, all of whom are trying to offload costs to the each other and the victims. Meanwhile, planners and consenters are still merrily approving new homes on flood plains and avoiding expensive decisions on bigger, better and more resilient stormwater systems, ‘sponge city’ interventions and flood protection.

That’s because the new Government dumped the RMA and Three Waters reforms, and has yet to propose new council funding arrangements or restart work on a Climate Adaptation Act or a National Policy Statement for Natural Hazard decision making. The risks are growing that insurers, bankers and climate change itself will drive the process of Aotearoa-NZ’s climate retreat in an opaque, chaotic and unfair process, in which:

* a myriad of family and business financial catastrophes play out in private as their land becomes uninsurable, unbankable and unsaleable, or,

* they are blown away and flooded into a never-ending limboland of insurance claims and appeals for buyouts subject to the whims of insurance assessors and financially-driven council officials working at odds against each other and the central Government.

The ad-hoc response to Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary floods has led to:

* 1,415 new homes have been consented on flood plains in Auckland since the Anniversary Day floods RNZ Kate Newton

* thousands of homeowners of homes and land damaged in the floods stuck in limbo, often unable to return to and live in their own homes, or afford to pay for alternative accommodation;

* homeowners in Hawkes Bay forced to pay for the demolition of the properties they can’t live in anymore because the council says it can’t afford it Stuff Marty Sharpe; and

* insurers such as IAG pledging not to insure properties labelled category 2 or 3 as slip or flood-prone homes and saying places such as Petone would not be viable to live in within 30-50 years. BusinessDesk-$$$ Greg Hurrell The Post-$$$ Nicholas Boyack RNZ Hamish Cardwell

Councils, insurance experts, bankers and climate academics are all calling for the Government to urgently restart Parliament’s Environment Select Committee inquiry into Climate Adaptation, in particular considering the recommendations for managed retreat and adaptation funding in the Report of the Expert Working Group on Managed Retreat, which was sent to the previous Labour Government in August last year and has laid dormant ever since.

It recommends:

* changing the now-dumped Natural and Built Environment and the Spatial Planning Acts to enable locally-driven adaptation and relocation plans, including the capacity for Crown and/or council-funded land and building buyouts;

* decisions on who should fund the buyouts, and how owner-occupiers, rental property owners and holiday-home owners should be compensated;

* owner occupiers should receive CV for their properties or a formula on the cost per square metre to build a new home up to a cap;

* not-for-profit owners and iwi should be fully compensated in the same way as for owner-occupiers;

* rental property and commercial property owners receive less generous payments and be required to reinvest in rental properties in a new location;

* second or holiday home owners should receive no (repeat no) compensation;

* that central or local Government pay for demolition and cleanup of properties subject to a relocation plan;

* that a new crown entity or agency be set up within the Environment Ministry to write and manage the relocation and adaptation plans, which would be publicly available through an online portal;

* that risk assessments used in relocation plans be included in Land Information Memorandum (LIM) documents; and,

* funding should come from general taxation or a special levy building up a fund.

Industry experts are also calling on the new Government to pick up and adopt the Proposed National Policy Statement for Natural Hazard Decision-making that was put out for consultation ending on November 20 last year and is now stuck between Governments.

I spoke yesterday to Judy Lawrence about these issues in an interview for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff. She is the Adjunct Professor at the Climate Change Research Institute at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and a Climate Commissioner. Her comments in the podcast above available to all were made in her capacity as an adjunct professor, not as a Climate Commissioner.

Full paying subscribers can usually read and hear more detail in my Dawn Chorus podcast above and below the paywall fold, but I’ve decided to pre-emptively open this one up, given the public interest involved. Join our community of paying subscribers to get access to ‘Hoon’ webinars, our private chat system and be able to comment on articles. Paying subscribers also support the public interest journalism we do at The Kākā on housing affordability, climate emissions and poverty.

Chart of the day

Have we learned or changed anything?

Quotes of the day

Making New Zealand great again through…more lending

“We do need rules and regulations, but what I really want to do is get this industry cracking,” Commerce Minister Andrew Bayly after announcing to a Financial Services Council conference in Auckland yesterday a loosening of CCCFA rules and the transfer of regulation of bank and other lending from the Commerce Commission to the FMA via BusinessDesk-$$$ Dileepa Fonseka. Bayly earlier cited industry figures that CCCFA rules that would be changed had prevented mortgage approvals by 6-7% of applicants. Stuff Susan Edmunds

Cartoons of the day

A satellite country

‘Stop mucking around’

Timeline cleansing nature pic of the day

Fungi galore

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: In this week’s wrap of climate news, Bernard Hickey and Cathrine Dyer talk about how climate sceptics amplify research that confirms their own biases into the mainstream. They also discuss a survey about who are Aotearoa-NZ's climate sceptics and how they’re changing. We also discuss how they influenced the 2023 election result.

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.

How climate sceptics amplify their biases more widely

This week we are taking a look at a fascinating media analysis by Robert McSweeney and Ayesha Tandon over at Carbon Brief. Their analysis of the academic papers on climate that got the most media attention in 2023 reveals it was climate deniers driving the numbers on the most frequently-featured paper.

The Altmetric measure looks at how often academic papers appear in online news articles, blogs, and on social media.

Of the top 10 climate papers in the Carbon Brief analysis (shown in the diagram below), three addressed the cryosphere ie those parts of the earth’s surface featuring frozen water including sea, lake, and river ice; snowpacks, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets and frozen ground. One further paper addressed the overlap between the cryosphere and the hydrosphere, specifically, the effect of melting ice on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC.

Two papers addressed planetary and earth system boundaries. The remaining four discussed, in descending order: Exxon Mobil’s global warming projections; heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022; an attempt at quantifying the human cost of global climate change; and finally, one paper looked at land-mammal extinctions that would result from climate extremes during a super-continent convergence in the distant future.

But let’s look at the paper in the top spot.

It was called “Change in Antarctic ice shelf area from 2009 to 2019” and its score of 13,866 was substantially higher than any other climate paper in any previous review. The previous ‘high score’, from 2022, was 7,803.

The paper used satellite data to identify changes in the area of the ice shelves surrounding Antarctica, known as the ‘calving front’. In the decade following 2009, the ice shelf area increased by 5,300 square kilometres. This just goes to show that we live in a complex eco-system that responds to many forcings and feedbacks and occasionally produces counter-intuitive results that can temporarily mask long-term trends.

We now know that the Antarctic has followed-up with a precipitous and significant loss of ice shelf area in the early 2020’s, most spectacularly in 2023, fuelling suspicion that some kind of tipping point had occurred. In fact, the three other cryosphere-related papers in the review’s top ten contain warnings about such things as future loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet, collapse of the AMOC and sensitivity of glaciers to small temperature increases, all of which have meaningful implications for human societies.

But that was all lost on the deniers who saw one story that reinforced their pre-existing beliefs and loudly went to town with it, mostly as it turns out on twitter (ok, that bit is the opposite of shocking, you might even say banal). The paper only appeared in news articles a grand total of seven times.

... the paper’s high Altmetric score is principally a result of a huge number of mentions on Twitter – more than 63,000 posts from around 48,000 accounts. (Altmetric includes weightings in its scoring system, so news articles (with a weighting of eight) are deemed to have more impact than tweets (0.25).)

A closer look suggests that the paper has been widely quoted by the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent climate sceptics in an attempt to push back on concerns around climate change and the loss of Antarctic ice. These posts have then been widely retweeted by other accounts. 

A selection of the climate-sceptic tweets relating to the Cryosphere paper. Source: Climate Brief

Carbon Brief spoke with study author Prof Anna Hogg from the University of Leeds.

To see the paper “being used as evidence to suggest that climate change isn’t happening” was a “real surprise”, says Hogg, because the paper “doesn’t make any such statement”.

Specifically, the gains the study identifies in ice-shelf area in east Antarctica do not detract from the risks of retreating ice shelves on other parts of the continent, says Hogg:

“The decrease in ice shelf area in west Antarctica is particularly important as this ice shelf area actively ‘buttresses’ the flow of ice from the ice sheet behind it, which through ice dynamic processes is one of the reasons why west Antarctica is contributing significantly to present-day sea level rise.”

What is striking about the analysis result is the extent to which the climate deniers were such dedicated and busy little bees. If only we could harness their startling productivity for good…

Most studies suggest the actual number of climate deniers is shrinking as the effects of climate change become increasingly difficult to ignore – but the remaining ones seem capable of having an outsized effect.

The noisiest 3.7%

Backing this up is a recent study by researchers Taciano Milfont, Ariana Athey and Chris Sibley exploring climate change beliefs and concerns in New Zealand.

They found that the largest group, 60.4% of those surveyed, was comprised of those with the highest level of belief in, and concern about, climate change. Meanwhile, those with the lowest levels of belief and concern made up the smallest group (3.7%). The study also found that over time, people are consistently moving toward higher levels of climate change belief and concern.

That small group labelled as ‘Climate Sceptics’ in the study are more likely to be “male, New Zealand European, religious and to endorse conservative and system-justifying ideologies that are expected to perpetuate a hierarchical social system”.

In other words, climate deniers are motivated by a desire to maintain current societal structures from which they benefit. So, it’s less about the science and more about power and culture. The paper goes on to say that:

Noticeably, a desire to dominate and be superior to others is the main predictor of membership in the climate change denial segment of the population, which fortunately represents a minority of the New Zealanders in our sample.

However, although representing a minority, the demographic and socio-psychological characteristics of individuals within the climate change denial profile are often overrepresented in powerful socio-economic positions in society, meaning that their denial can be extremely consequential in delaying action (taken from the paper’s conclusion).

That first bit will surprise absolutely nobody who has had the questionable pleaure of engaging with climate deniers online. Another problem, as discussed in a study (The New Climate Denial) that we featured in last week’s climate wrap, is that traditional climate deniers are shifting to different strategies to delay action on climate change.

A lot of the so-called ‘new denial’ focuses on energy systems and transitions, claiming that they won’t work, will be too expensive, or will cause living standards to decline.

These claims can and should be countered, but in the rush to deal with this cloaked denial, there is also some risk of enforcing allegiance to a particular paradigm of technological progress that features overly optimistic solutionism and green growth agendas.

‘Loopholes, weasel words, and vacuous generalisations’

In his latest blog, Sir Jonathon Porritt takes aim at those ““stubborn optimists” or “resolute climate solutionists” who still cannot accept just how fast things are changing around the world. Speaking about the final agreement coming out of COP28, he says:

It’s so full of loopholes, weasel words, and vacuous generalisations, let alone unlimited boosterism for all-but-useless technologies like Carbon Capture and Storage, as to fast track this Agreement instantly into the pantheon of toxic suicide notes.

Suffice to say that not all ‘climate solutions’ are equal – many are partial at best, and some are useless to the point of being a harmful distraction. The new denialists are not silly – they have moved into a space in which there is a lot more nuance and plenty of legitimate debate about the best path forward. For instance, some climate change solutions can contribute to the worsening of other planetary boundary problems such as biodiversity loss, demanding that we apply a wider lens to the way we define the problem-solution space.

We need to be alert to the way that commercial and fossil interests advocate and lobby to define that space in increasingly narrow and limited ways that just happen to coincide with their own profit-making potential. Stymieing the ‘new climate denialists’ while retaining a healthy level of scepticism about ‘solutionism’ is looking to be an increasingly complex and difficult task in a world of accelerating misinformation and disinformation.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:

* The Reserve Bank’s proposal this week to loosen Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) restrictions at the same time as introducing Debt To Income (DTI) restrictions is expected to add demand pressure to house prices, just as the central bank is expected to start cutting interest rates. See Thursday’s email.

* Cabinet met on Tuesday under intense pressure from councils and the infrastructure industry to come up with alternatives to Three Waters, including demands for more funding and revenue raising tools for councils, more council borrowing and a generalised push for more water metreing and charging. See Tuesday’s email.

* The business of Government began again in earnest for 2024 this week, with the National-ACT-NZ First coalition vowing to ‘hustle’ through the rest of its 100-day plan. In my view, the rhetoric of ‘hustle’ and simply pushing to have more people working harder for longer hours is redolent of what is wrong with New Zealand Inc and the approaches of both flavours of Governments in recent decades. See Monday’s email.

* Documents leaked to Guyon Espiner at RNZ showed NZ First’s Associate Minister of Health Casey Costello, a former head of the Taxpayers Union, which has received donations from tobacco firms, wants to freeze excise on cigarettes, against the advice of public health officials. Former NZ First staffers now work for tobacco firms in New Zealand. We talked about the unregulated influence of lobbyists in the podcast above.

* The Government chose to send troops to the Red Sea to back US and UK airstrikes on Houthi bases in Yemen. We talked about this in the podcast above with Robert Patman.

What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:

* 5.00 pm - 5.10 pm - Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion about Donald Trump and great cartoons.

* 5.10 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard, Peter and Cathrine Dyer talked about the researh showing how climate sceptics used social media to lift a paper about thicker ice cover in Antarctica to be the most-read on climate in 2023, and a paper showing who are climate sceptics in Aotearoa-NZ and how their views shift over time.

* 5.20 pm - 5.30 pm - Peter, Bernard, and Robert Patman talked about the the Government’s position supporting US and UK airstrikes on Houthi positions in Yemen.

* 5.30 pm -5.45 pm - Peter, and Bernard spoke with Holly Bennett, the founder and owner of government relations and communications firm Awhi Group, on her calls over the last year for lobbyists to form a public lobbying register, a code of conduct and an oversight body, based on the New Zealand Media Council. RNZ

* 5.45 pm to 6:00 pm - Peter and Bernard spoke with Core Logic Head of Research Nick Goodall on the RBNZ’s DTI proposal and the outlook for the OCR after this week’s inflation figures.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.

This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread the work from my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction around in other public venues. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments. We have a couple of special offers on at the moment.

Other places I appeared this week

I talked to Valocity Global Real Estate CEO Helen O’Sullivan for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff about the RBNZ’s DTI proposal.

We also produce this 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, which you can sign up to via Spotify and Apple and Youtube for free.

Chart of the week

We already work too much, too often and too hard

Cartoon of the week

Protecting supply chains

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: Sea and air temperatures smashed records in 2023 and now most of the Davos crowd expect a catastrophic global climate event in the next decade. So why can’t humans organise themselves to stop one happening?

The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer begins her first weekly wrap of 2024 with a closer look at the climate records of 2023 and research showing we may be evolutionarily unfit to respond to stop climate emissions, even though we technically could. Bernard and Cathrine talk through the implications in the video 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.

2023 was the year we lived most dangerously

* The year 2023 was a defining year for climate change, with surface and ocean temperature, along with sea ice extent records being smashed. We review the data courtesy of Zeke Hausfather and Andrew Dessler on Carbon Brief and The Climate Brink substack.

* The contributors to 2023’s unexpectedly high warming include human forcing, a swift transition from La Niña to El Niño, a solar maximum, the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption and a reduction in aerosol pollution from marine fuels. It turns out that even in combination, these do not provide a sufficient explanation for the warming that we experienced in 2023. What on earth is up with the climate? We are left with ‘natural variability’ and James Hansen’s explanation, but no satisfactory conclusion.

* The World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Global Risk Report for 2024, showing that 63% of elite respondents to the WEF’s Perceptions Survey fear a global catastrophic risk event will occur in the next decade. The top four potential catastrophic risks they fear are environmental.

* Why can’t we act? Are we zombies or just evolutionarily unfit? We say that there is just not enough research into the human cultural and social underpinnings of global catastrophic risks, and this requires urgent attention!

Are we there yet?

The year 2023 proved to be a defining year for climate change. It was a year in which temperature records, both on land and at sea, were not just broken, but absolutely pummelled. We experienced palpable climate phenomena, in vastly disparate places, bearing the unmistakable fingerprint of human-caused climate change. And we saw a range of different explanations emerge, some of which challenged the mainstream climate consensus. We also had the uncomfortable experience of witnessing the first UNFCCC climate conference run by fossil fuel interests, which had at least some success in making transparent the complete inadequacy of the current globally coordinated response.

One big question that emerged in 2023 was whether climate change was accelerating. Have we hit some kind of turning or tipping point?

For a comprehensive analysis of the climate record in 2023, you can’t do better than Zeke Hausfather’s State of the Climate report on Climate Brief, along with his and Andrew Dessler’s comments on the The Climate Brink substack. I’ve drawn some key information from these sources.

First of all, 2023 was unambiguously the warmest year on record:

This result was unexpected. The actual surface temperature for 2023 was well beyond even the confidence intervals of the predictions for the year from the major datasets. Berkeley Earth recorded a 1.54˚C increase above pre-industrial levels for the year. It wasn’t just surface temperatures breaking records. It was also ocean temperature and Antarctic sea-ice extent. Splitting out the land and ocean surface temperatures, as can be seen in the chart below, reveals a particularly sharp spike in ocean heat content (OHC), as well as showing average surface temperatures over land surpassing 2˚C for the first time compared to pre-industrial levels.

According to Hausfather,

Last year was the warmest on record for the heat content of the world’s oceans. Ocean heat content (OHC) has increased by around 473 zettajoules – a billion trillion joules – since the 1940s. The heat increase in 2023 alone compared to 2021 – about 15 zettajoules – is around 25 times as much as the total energy produced by all human activities on Earth in 2021 (the latest year in which global primary energy statistics are available).

While the summer minimum for arctic sea-ice extent was the sixth lowest ever, the Antarctic hit new record lows for almost the entire year.

Antarctic sea ice was particularly low between June and November, shattering prior records by a substantial margin. While long-term trends in Antarctic sea ice have been ambiguous in the past (unlike in the Arctic where there is a consistent long-term decline), there is increasing evidence that human-driven warming is starting to drive significant loss of sea ice in the region. 

The following chart shows Arctic (red line) and Antarctic (blue line) sea ice extent day-by-day for 2023, along with the historical ranges in corresponding shading.

Scientists have explored several possible reasons for the extreme results in 2023, including El Niño/La Niña, the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption, the solar cycle, reductions in marine fuel pollution and anthropogenic forcing.

According to Hausfather

... both the Tonga eruption and the phase-out of sulphur in marine fuel are problematic explanations of extreme temperatures in 2023. 

There is still a vigorous debate in the scientific literature about whether the eruption cooled or warmed the planet based on estimates of both sulphur dioxide and water vapour in the atmosphere, with some papers arguing for warming and others for cooling. Some modelling suggests that the largest impacts of the eruption would be in winter months, which does not match the timing of extreme summer temperatures experienced in 2023.

Similarly, the phase-out of sulphur in marine fuels occurred in 2020. If it had a large climate impact, it would show up in 2021 and 2022 rather than suddenly affecting the record in 2023. While it definitely has had a climate impact – alongside the broader reduction in aerosol emissions over the past three decades – the timing suggests that its likely not the primary driver of 2023 extremes.

Even El Niño – the usual suspect behind record warm years – does not clearly explain 2023 temperatures. Historically global temperatures have lagged around three months behind El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific; for example, El Niño developed quite similarly in 1997, 2015 and 2023. But it was the following year – 1998 and 2016 – that saw record high temperatures. 

This leaves us lacking a clear explanation for why global temperatures were so high in 2023. Andrew Dessler suggests here that the answer will probably turn out to be the result of natural variation. At the same time, Dessler argues, the models are predicting an acceleration in global warming in the future as greenhouse gases continue to grow, while aerosols decline, just not at the abrupt rate experienced in 2023.

This is not uncontroversial – in an opinion piece for the New York Times in October last year, Zeke Hausfather said

...while many experts have been cautious about acknowledging it, there is increasing evidence that global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years rather than continued at a gradual, steady pace. That acceleration means that the effects of climate change we are already seeing — extreme heat waves, wildfires, rainfall and sea level rise — will only grow more severe in the coming years.

I don’t make this claim lightly. Among my colleagues in climate science, there are sharp divisions on this question, and some aren’t convinced it’s happening.

He points to three lines of evidence:

* the rate of surface temperature warming over the past 15 years has been 40% higher than the rate since the 1970’s;

* there has been an acceleration in ocean heat content over recent decades (this is where 90% of global heating is stored; and

* satellite measurements of earth’s energy imbalance show a big increase in the amount of heat trapped in earth’s atmosphere over the past couple of decades.

Adding an extra frisson of doubt is James Hansen’s paper, ‘Global Warming in the Pipeline’ which claims that climate scientists have underestimated climate sensitivity and that this has been masked in the models by a corresponding under-estimation of the cooling effect provided by aerosol pollution (which increases Earth’s albedo). He claims that the abrupt increase in global surface temperature experienced in 2023 is consistent with predictions in his paper. In a January 2024 communication, he and his co-authors said,

We expect record monthly temperatures to continue into mid-2024 due to the present large planetary energy imbalance, with the 12- month running-mean global temperature reaching +1.6-1.7°C relative to 1880-1920 and falling to only +1.4 ± 0.1°C during the following La Nina. Considering the large planetary energy imbalance, it will be clear that the world is passing through the 1.5°C ceiling, and is headed much higher, unless steps are taken to affect Earth’s energy imbalance.

This is considerably higher than the standard models are predicting (shown in the chart below). Another year of beating the model predictions in 2024 will certainly strengthen his case, but it still won’t prove definitive.

Davos jet-setters are worried

Meantime the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report for 2024 now has environmental risks occupying the top four spots over the next ten years, with AI propagated misinformation and disinformation in the near term lowering society’s ability to adequately address them.

The report worries about environmental risks hitting ‘a point of no return’, exploring the consequences of the world passing at least one ‘climate tipping point’ within the next decade.

Recent research suggests that the threshold for triggering long-term, potentially irreversible and self-perpetuating changes to select planetary systems is likely to be passed at or before 1.5°C of global warming, which is currently anticipated to be reached by the early 2030s. Many economies will remain largely unprepared for “non-linear” impacts: the potential triggering of a nexus of several related socio-environmental risks has the potential to speed up climate change, through the release of carbon emissions, and amplify related impacts, threatening climate-vulnerable populations. The collective ability of societies to adapt could be overwhelmed, considering the sheer scale of potential impacts and infrastructure investment requirements, leaving some communities and countries unable to absorb both the acute and chronic effects of rapid climate change (P. 7).

One of the recent research studies that they refer to is The Global Tipping Points Report, found here. The WEF’s perceptions survey reveals a remarkably pessimistic outlook with 63% of correspondents believing that the risk of a global catastrophe occurring within the next ten years is either highly elevated or looming.

The sense that things are not going well and that we are heading into very turbulent and stormy times turns out to be widespread, at least among ‘the Forum’s extensive network of academic, business, government, civil society and thought leaders’ (p. 99) who were canvassed for the survey. If you are worried, you are very definitely not alone – the global elite is right there with you, also very worried.

For my money, the most striking aspect of all of this is the extent to which ‘business as usual’ is the dominant approach for private business, governments and, of course, COP28. “Cross-border cooperation”, WEF claims “remains the only viable pathway for the most critical risks to human security and prosperity” (p. 92). If COP28 is anything to go by, trouble is indeed looming.

How can the entire global elite be so very, very worried and so very, very unresponsive, all at the same time? Has the Zombie Apocalypse already happened? I’m a big fan of zombie movies and now I’m worried that I blinked and missed the real-life event...

‘Our lizard brains make us (not) do it’

One possible explanation for why we just can’t seem to act is that we are evolutionarily ill-equipped for it. Phys.org welcomed the New Year with this cheery little piece entitled Evolution might stop humans from solving climate change. It’s based on a paper out of University of Maine by Timothy M. Waring et al.

Tackling the climate crisis effectively will probably require new worldwide regulatory, economic and social systems—ones that generate greater cooperation and authority than existing systems like the Paris Agreement. To establish and operate those systems, humans need a functional social system for the planet, which we don't have...The other problem is much worse, Waring says. In a world filled with sub-global groups, cultural evolution among these groups will tend to solve the wrong problems, benefiting the interests of nations and corporations and delaying action on shared priorities. Cultural evolution among groups would tend to exacerbate resource competition and could lead to direct conflict between groups and even global human dieback.

They suggest that more research is required that might lead to novel policy solutions.

This is probably quite important. It is very strange, but true, that at no point in the history of the climate change crisis has the world ever lacked the technological know-how to address it. Yet we spend almost all of our research investment on additional technological solutions tackling various symptoms of the problem. Technologies that we consistently fail to adopt at the scale required or that fail to address the core drivers of the problem. If humanity fails to address climate change, it won’t be because we didn’t know how or lacked the means. It will be because behavioural and cultural traits, along with their systemic arrangements, got in the way.

We should be pouring money into researching the underlying social and human drivers of catastrophic risks, and how to shift them. Yet we consistently favour STEM research over social science. To the extent that the technology is now hastening us toward the edge (specifically, the AI propagated misinformation and disinformation highlighted in the WEF report).

An over-shooting crisis of human behaviour

On that note, a New Zealand-led research paper that examined the underlying behavioural drivers of ecological overshoot is starting to be picked up by international media. The team’s paper, led by conservationist Joseph Merz, featured in a column written by podcaster Rachel Donald (Planet Critical) in the Guardian this month.

“Essentially, overshoot is a crisis of human behaviour,” says Merz. “For decades we’ve been telling people to change their behaviour without saying: ‘Change your behaviour.’ We’ve been saying ‘be more green’ or ‘fly less’, but meanwhile all of the things that drive behaviour have been pushing the other way. All of these subtle cues and not so subtle cues have literally been pushing the opposite direction – and we’ve been wondering why nothing’s changing.”

And finally, circling back to the mis- and disinformation issue, this report on new forms of climate denial from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate was published this month. The researchers use an AI model to measure the rate of growth over the last five years of what they term “new climate denial” on Youtube. ‘New denial’ is defined as “the departure from rejection of anthropogenic climate change, to attacks on climate science and scientists, and rhetoric seeking to undermine confidence in solutions to climate change. “New Denial” claims now constitute 70% of all climate denial claims made on YouTube, up from 35% six years ago.”

I’m interested to hear your thoughts and comments on this report. I think they are on to something important, but have some reservations about grey areas, loose definitions, the ability of AI to distinguish between denial and legitimate debate, and the potential uses of the ‘new denial’ framing. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:

* The new National-ACT-NZ First coalition Government shut down the Auckland ‘Light’ Rail project to avoid spending up to $29.2 billion over decades, which was the right decision for the wrong reasons and still leaves the Government liable for unachieved emissions reductions and without congestion-reducing solutions for unplanned population growth running at over 3% per annum. Monday’s Dawn Chorus.

* We decided The Kaka would stay on Substack. Tuesday’s email and podcast.

* Business confidence surged in the December quarter as the change of Government was confirmed, reinstating a pro-National bias in confidence about the wider economy over Labour to nearer the 27 percentage-point long-run average. Wednesday’s Dawn Chorus

* The Government ruled EV owners would have to pay the same RUCs as diesel vehicles and the same road taxes as vehicles with double-cab-ute-type fuel economy, doubling down on the pain of losing the Clean Car Discount rebate and effectively encouraging drivers to buy heavier diesel utes. Thursday’s Dawn Chorus.

* PM Christopher Luxon and the National caucus finally returned from their summer holidays for an offsite retreat and the Government will hold its first cabinet meeting of the year on Monday, which is the same fourth week in January that Labour usually started back. Luxon had promised to start earlier than Labour. This week’s hoon above.

What we talked about on ‘The Hoon’ on Thursday night

In this week’s podcast above of the weekly ‘Hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers at 5pm on Thursday night:

* 5.00 pm - 5.10 pm - Bernard Hickey and Peter Bale opened the show with a discussion staying on Substack.

* 5.10 pm - 5.20 pm - Bernard, Peter and Cathrine Dyer talked about the record temperatures in 2023 and the social science problems behind failing to reduce climate emissions; and,

* 5.20 pm - 6:00 pm - Peter, Bernard, and Robert Patman talked about the 3% GDP per capita recession last year, the Government’s slow start, Aotearoa-NZ’s stance on Gaza and Nauru’s flip to supporting China over Taiwan.

The Hoon’s podcast version above was produced by Simon Josey.

This is a sampler for all free subscribers. Thanks to the support of paying subscribers here, I’m able to spread the work from my public interest journalism here about housing affordability, climate change and poverty reduction around in other public venues. I’d love you to join the community supporting and contributing to this work with your ideas, feedback and comments. We have a couple of special offers on at the moment.

Other places I appeared this week

I talked to Water NZ CEO Gillian Blythe for When The Facts Change via The Spinoff about the water infrastructure crisis.

We also produce this 5 in 5 with ANZ daily podcast and Substack for ANZ Institutional in Australia, which you can sign up to via Spotify and Apple and Youtube for free.

Chart of the week

Aotearoa-NZ’s GDP per capita fell at GFC-type rate in 2023

Cartoon of the week

A Caucus retreat

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: After a few weeks of debate and some digging around, we’re happy to commit to staying on Substack for the foreseeable future.

Substack doesn’t have a ‘National Socialist’ problem and its ease of use and its community-and-network-building tools are infinitely better and healthier than the alternatives. I’ve built and run at least four internet publishing and/or email subscription systems and helped roll out at least five others over the last 30 years, both here in Aotearoa-NZ and in Britain. I have some experience and skills to make a judgement on this issue and Substack does not have anywhere near the ‘N*zi problem’ suggested, or is likely to develop one.

Substack is far and away the simplest, cleanest, fairest, most efficient and least conflicted platform I’ve used to build safe and useful communities around news and analysis about politics and economics. Here’s the crux of it: paying subscribers can read, listen and comment on all the detail below the paywall fold and in the Chat function of the Substack app. This means the incentives for publishing and debate are so, so much healthier and more sustainable.

We’re not going to let a controversy over five substackers with barely a hundred active readers and no paying subscribers force us off a platform we have used to make a good honest living with a vibrant and constructive community.

For proof, subscribe and download the Substack app to look at the debates we’ve had amongst ourselves over the last couple of days. The quality of the commentary and interactions on Chat and in our comments on this and other issues has convinced me Substack is the place to stay, but there are more reasons below the paywall fold.

Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy today:

* Green list MP Golriz Ghrahraman resigned this afternoon for mental health reasons. RNZ. Earlier it was reported the owner of Wellington gift store Cre8iveworxs sent an email to other stores in Wellington yesterday saying it had laid a shoplifting complaint with Police in October against Green list MP Golriz Ghrahraman, meaning there are now three such allegations being investigated, including two against her from Ponsonby Road boutique Scotties in Auckland. She returned from overseas yesterday. Stuff Glenn McConnell

* In more signs of water infrastructure problems in growth cities, the Queenstown Lakes District Council reported effluent had overflowed from its Shotover Wastewater Treatment into a swamp nearby 1News, while Wellington moves to level two water restrictions tomorrow, partly because of a spike in demand from residents filling emergency water tanks. The Post-$$$ Julie Jacobson

* Despite the reported deaths of 156 covid patients in the last four weeks as the highly-mutated JN.1 variant powers a fifth wave of infections, the Government is considering not paying for free facemasks and Rapid Antigen Tests from the end of February and ending free boosters this winter, in order to save money. NZ Herald Jamie Morton

* Nauru announced it would seek a full resumption of diplomatic relations with China and cut ties with Taiwan. Reuters Kirsty Needham and Yimou Lee

Full paying subscribers can read and hear more detail in my Dawn Chorus podcast above and below the paywall fold. Join our community of paying subscribers to get access to ‘Hoon’ webinars, our private chat system and be able to comment on articles. Paying subscribers also support the public interest journalism we do at The Kākā on housing affordability, climate emissions and poverty.

Why The Kākā is staying on Substack

This is a post we’ve taken a few weeks to research, debate and write to make sure we can answer subscribers’ questions in the most deliberate and informed way. Thankyou to those who emailed and messaged with questions, especially for your patience. This post is the answer. Originally, we had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary and we would be able to begin 2024 focused on the housing, climate and poverty issues in Aotearoa-NZ. But the weight of questions about whether we would leave Substack, other articles and open letters by writers we respect, and a few cancellations, has forced us to address the issue over the last couple of days.

My default position on issues around free speech, extreme speech, hate speech and the politics of cancellation and censorship is to let it all go flying through the keeper. Debates about politics, democracy and the ethics and practicality of publishing bans and de-platforming quickly become toxic and mostly pointless. They are the definition of the blasts of noise erupting from the Internet that I try to sidestep and weave through without engaging. There’s nothing we could usefully say or do that would make a difference in any broad or even specific sense. Focusing on housing, climate and poverty here is something we can do that might make a difference. It’s also what we’re paid to do. That’s more important than most think, which we’ll touch on later.

This latest blast of noise erupted on November 28 via Jonathan Katz’s article in The Atlantic-gift, which accused Substack of hosting white supremacy and anti-semitic writers, and even more damningly, making money from them. A breezy read of the article would leave most with the impression there’s hundreds of extremists making good livings from subscriptions enabled and amplified by Substack, which is making loads of money from spreading the sludge that is corroding our democracies.

“Substack’s lax content moderation creates an opening for white nationalists eager to get their message out.

“The newsletter platform advertises itself as the last, best hope for civility on the internet—and aspires to a bigger role in politics in 2024. But just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.” The Atlantic-gift Jonathan Katz

Yikes. That got my attention, in part because I’m a subscriber to The Atlantic. One of the five gift article links I am entitled to monthly is above. Katz went on:

“At least 16 of the newsletters that I reviewed have overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or in prominent graphics. Andkon’s Reich Press, for example, calls itself “a National Socialist newsletter”; its logo shows Nazi banners on Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, and one recent post features a racist caricature of a Chinese person. A Substack called White-Papers, bearing the tagline “Your pro-White policy destination,” is one of several that openly promote the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that inspired deadly mass shootings at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue; two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques; an El Paso, Texas, Walmart; and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket.

“Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack, seemingly flouting terms of service that ban attempts to “publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes.” The Atlantic-gift Jonathan Katz

This appeared to be an open-and-shut expose of the platform I use minute by minute to make my living from. We’re also aware of the toxicity and dangers of this sort of extremism. We’ve seen and received the ugliest of death threats and we’re just as aware of the Christchurch attacks as anyone else here. But by the time the article had cut through our various noise reduction filters, it was the summer holidays. Then in early January came the letters of protest from Substack writers I respected both here (Emily Writes Weekly) and overseas (Molly White’s Citation Needed). By early this week, a couple of the more successful and serious writers abandoned Substack altogether (Ryan Broderick’s Garbage Day and Casey Newton’s Platformer. Then John Naughton, a writer I respect and follow, wrote: ‘Publish N*zi newsletters on your plaform Substack and you will rightly be damned.’

We were also starting to receive questions from subscribers about whether or when we would leave Substack. A handful cancelled their subscriptions. So it’s clear this is not something The Kākā can just pad up to and hold its bat above its head.

Katz was wrong and Substack is vastly better than the rest

The best place to start in any gnarly issue like this is to check the facts cited in saying ‘Substack has a N*zi’ problem’.

It turns out Katz was wrong with his suggestion hundreds of writers were making thousands of dollars in a system that was amplifying and spreading their sludge. He cited 16 newsletters he’d seen and suggested several were earning money from subscriptions, but did not document which ones and how much. Casey Newton went on to identify six Substacks he viewed as breaching Substack’s own terms of service with extremist content, and suggested there were enough making money to be worried about, and the beginning of a trend he didn’t want to be part of.

Upon receiving Newton’s list, Substack banned five of the six substacks, but he said he was still worried Substack would allow many more and he wasn’t going to stick around to find out:

“To be clear, there are a lot more than six bad publications on Substack: our analysis found dozens of far-right publications advocating for the great replacement theory and other violent ideologies. 

“But until Substack makes it clear that it will take proactive steps to remove hate speech and extremism, the current size of the problem isn’t relevant. The company’s edgelord branding ensures that the fringes will continue to arrive and set up shop, and its infrastructure creates the possibility that those publications will grow quickly. That’s what matters.” Casey Newton via Platformer

So let’s look at the actual numbers, Substack’s actual terms of service and whether Substack actually is or will turn into an X-style hellscape. Substack does ban types of content and writers, including over nudity p*rn and credible threats to violence. It is also partnered with Stripe, which also won’t allow writers of these threats to receive payments, although they could still set up free sites.

It turns out the five banned substacks had barely 100 active readers and no (repeat nil) actual paying subscribers. One of the Substacks accused of being extremist was not banned and it does still offer subscriptions, but it is now inactive and was barely read when it was. For comparison’s sake, posts on The Kākā now often get over 50 likes and dozens of comments each. The extremist site’s posts were lucky to get one or two likes and no comments, even though they were turned on for all.

Compared to X, which the protest letter writers and Substack abandoners spend hours a day on, Substack is a relative Garden of Eden.

Substack’s creation of Notes and its algorythmically-curated weekly suggestions email has created the chance Substack readers and writers will be ‘pushed’ nasty stuff into their feeds and in-boxes, although my experience and the experiences of the thousands of subscribers to The Kākā (I asked them via Chat) is that this type of awful spam and harassment is infinitesimally rare. Compared to X, which the protest letter writers and Substack abandoners spend hours a day on, Substack is a relative Garden of Eden.

It’s true that Substack does not moderate either the posts on its platform or comments. That is up to the publisher and there are a whole range of tools, gradations of access and filters to help. But the biggest reason the comment and Chat threads are nowhere near as toxic as anything on X, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn is that most publishers only allow paying subscribers to comment.

No ads and subscriptions change everything. For the better

It’s worth introducing some background on how The Kākā came to be and why our experiences building and running publishing, subscription and comment platforms on the Internet qualify us to make a judgement.

I helped create FTMarketwatch.com (since wound into FT.com) in the early 2000s with Peter Bale I founded Reuters.co.uk and helped rebuild Reuters.com shortly after that. I was the Fairfax Head of Digital running Stuff in the mid-2000s. I co-founded Interest.co.nz and co-built two versions of its news and comment platforms in the late 2000s. Both allowed anonymous comments and were not paywalled.

Then in 2012, I left Interest with a strong view that ad-funded journalism was not sustainable online and that email newsletter subscriptions were the best way forward. So I paid more than $50,000 to build my own more primitive version of Substack before Substack was even born. I worked with one of the founders of TradeMe and Xero to glom together an email publishing platform with a paywalled website and a user database that worked with Stripe. It required weeks of coding and testing, and then years of constant updates and maintenance, along with a few new features if I could afford.

It became Hive News and over five years we built up an audience of about 3,000 subscribers, both corporate and individual. They received a daily email and could access the articles with a user login and password that was connected to the user database to check if users had paid. Early on I decided not to allow comments from either free or paying subscribers, partly because of a dearth of readers initially and also because I didn’t have the time to moderate them on my own. I saw what open slather comments meant from my time at Interest. Never again. But I also saw how hard it was to be discovered and widely read when everything was behind a paywall, there was no community and the articles couldn’t be easily shared through social media.

By 2017, I decided to move on and try to create something bigger that everyone could read, if not comment on. I co-founded the current version of Newsroom.co.nz with Tim Murphy and Mark Jennings. I created and ran the Newsroom Pro side of the operation, which published a paid-subscriber-only email with articles that were paywalled. We redeveloped the site from 2019 onwards so paying subscribers only could comment. I’m still a shareholder in Newsroom and am incredibly proud of its progress and how it continues to thrive. That is partly because the site is not as ‘noisy’ and ugly as Stuff, NZ Herald and Newshub, largely because Newsroom does not allow anonymous comments from non-paying subscribers and is paid for by a mix of sponsorship and subscriptions, rather than flashing, over-bearing display advertising.

By 2020 I was aware of Substack and could see it was a much, much better version of Hive News. It had essentially become a ‘software as a service’ type platform for publishers wanting to make a living from subscriptions, rather than advertising. That’s why we started to publish The Kākā on Substack from late 2020 onwards. We turned on the paywall in late 2021 and have thrived ever since, mainly because of the new features constantly being developed, tested, maintained and debugged. They include the writers recommendations feature, Chat, Notes and the addition of audio and video. Substack’s features allow us to try out giving some things away, giving a part of articles away, and then opening things up later. I often dreamed of these features at Hive News, but could never imagine having the skills or funds to create them.

I suspected that changing the incentives for publishers and readers by relying on subscriptions rather than ads would transform everything, including:

* incentivising the creation of substantial articles that favoured reliability and accuracy over sensation or ‘click bait’;

* encouraging writers and readers to talk to each other directly in respectful and human ways that were constructive and hopeful, rather than just plain nasty and depressing; and,

* encouraging a long-term approach to publishing and audience building that understands readers, listeners and subscribers want useful, thoughtful and enlightening content that stands the test of time.

We can see the fruits of that after three years publishing on Substack and over two years with subscriptions turned on. It is a viable platform for us that makes us feel good every day about the work we do for the people who subscribe.

We’re not going to let a controversy over five substackers with barely a hundred active readers and no paying subscribers force us off a platform we have used to make a good honest living with a vibrant and constructive community. The alternatives now simply don’t have the features and the ability to create a network effect. We know what the alternative looks like because we’ve been there and it’s not as good. It’s good to see Substack step up and remove those publishers that have breached its rules and I hope both it and Stripe remain vigilant.

I’m no free-speech absolutist and I am just as sceptical as others about tech bros spouting libertarian mantras about the glory of tech solving the world’s problems. But I don’t think Substack’s systems or values encourage or create the sorts of hellscapes that first Facebook and now X have became. That’s because of the centrality of subscriptions and the lack of advertising.

It’s also because the platform is built for readers and writers to be together safely and in a human way. It’s not for advertisers and shareholders who want and need to create tribes of outrage addicts to make money. Substack makes money when readers and subscribers do something useful and meaningful for each other: publish articles, podcasts and videos that readers and viewers are happy to pay regularly to receive and read in pleasant places they can control.

We’re staying on Substack and we hope you’ll stay with us too.

Timeline cleansing nature pic of the day

Ka kite ano

Bernard

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe

TL;DR: Two days after Christmas, Immigration NZ ordered a ‘temporary’ dairy farm worker who has built a family in Tokoroa over 10 years on rolling visas to go home because of a risk he might need kidney treatment.

The latest case reported by Corazon Miller at 1News shows how unsustainable and unfair our current migration system has become, given it relies on a delusion that hundreds of thousands of ‘temporary’ workers will go home once a temporary labour shortage is filled, even though many are repeatedly rolled on temporary visas in a no-mans-land of being rebuffed for residency while paying full taxes without rights to welfare, public health services or the ability to buy a home.

Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy this morning:

* New Zealand’s largest bus operator, the private-equity-owned Go Bus group that owns 2,000 buses in NZ Bus, Sky Bus and Johnston’s Coachlines, will be put up for sale this month. AFR-$$$ Street Talk

* Waka Kotahi-NZTA has announced a 10-day stand-down period for driver’s license test attempts after an applicant has failed twice in a day, responding to a massive surge in demand for tests after the previous Government removed resit fees in October to make getting a driver’s license more affordable. RNZ

Full paying subscribers can read and hear more detail in my Dawn Chorus podcast above and below the paywall fold. Join our community of paying subscribers to get access to ‘Hoon’ webinars, our private chat system and be able to comment on articles. Paying subscribers also support the public interest journalism we do at The Kākā on housing affordability, climate emissions and poverty.

The human face of our deluded migration system

Our collective delusion that massively-high migration of workers on temporary visas is only a one-off thing that avoids the need for extra infrastructure to cater for migrant-driven population growth has an awful human cost.

That was illustrated again with a case reported on again by Corazon Miller at 1News last week of Filipino dairy worker, Noland Kinney, who is being forced to leave the country with his family after working on rolling temporary visas for 10 years. Immigration NZ ordered him to leave within six months after discovering he might need kidney treatment. He has a family here with three children that have gone through school in Tokoroa.

Noland Kinney received the news two days after Christmas in a letter from Immigration New Zealand (INZ). 1News first met the Waikato-based dairy farmer two months ago.

Back in October, officials indicated Kinney's chances of staying were slim as he might one day need a kidney transplant, which could impose significant costs on the health system.

But having paid taxes and for private healthcare, the 53-year-old hoped for leniency.

"I've been here for 10 years working hard for my family. It's not about me, it's about my family's future," Kinney said.

With his visa set to expire in six months, he's now pinning his hopes on an appeal to the Immigration Tribunal.

Kinney said, for him, there's no other choice but to keep fighting.

"Everything is here. We don't have a house, we don't have a job if we are sent back to the Philippines, we don't know where to go, I don't have family there." Noland Kinney via Corazon Miller at 1News

National MP Louise Upston and Green MP Ricardo Menendez March have both expressed support for Kinney and his family to stay. Upston wrote a letter to INZ which said his departure would be a "significant loss".

In my view, this case again reflects the flawed way labour shortages are assumed to be temporary and that migrants will be able to easily leave. This policy should be reviewed in tandem with a bipartisan debate and view taken on long-run population growth from migration, which is assumed and forecast to be around 0.5% per annum, but has actually been 1.5% to 2% over the last 20 years.

Quote of the day

Driving by only using the rear vision mirror

There’s been a disease in New Zealand. We have taken our eye off the future, not just in Auckland, but the nation, in some areas, and particularly in infrastructure. We’re always looking at what we should have been doing years ago.” Auckland Councillor Chris Darby via NZ Herald’s The Front Page podcast.

Chart of the day

Cartoon of the day

One way to reduce population growth

Timeline cleansing nature pic of the day

A butterfly in the grass in Wellington

Ka kite ano

Bernard

PS: I’ll publish these occasionally through until January 15, when I’ll resume publication in full. I’m conscious our subscriber numbers stalled last summer when I took a full three weeks off, and they stalled again towards the end of this year as I took a higher share of articles out from behind the paywall. I’ve found regular and frequent posts and podcasts, most of which are behind paywalls, helps keep our community growing. I welcome appeals to open up the particularly public-interestey ones.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thekaka.substack.com/subscribe