Tag: New Zealand

Why Is Fashion Talking About Regenerative Farming?

New York Times: Why Is Fashion Talking About Regenerative Farming? Brands like North Face, Allbirds and Patagonia, as well as the Kering luxury group, are all about agriculture these days. Here’s the dirt.

Fashion, like politics, loves a buzzword — especially when it comes to the environment. Sustainability! Circularity! They just tripped off the tongue. And now there’s a new favorite in town: regenerative.

In January, the luxury group Kering, owner of Gucci and Saint Laurent (among other brands), was a co-founder of the Regenerative Fund for Nature, aimed at converting one million hectares (2.47 million acres) of land producing raw materials for fashion from regular farmland to regenerative agriculture in five years.

In February, the New Zealand Merino Company announced that it has joined with Allbirds, Icebreaker and Smartwool to create the first platform dedicated to regenerative wool.

What a 1,600-year-old New Zealand tree can tell us about climate change

Vox: What a 1,600-year-old New Zealand tree can tell us about climate change. Buried in mud for millennia, some of the hulking kauri trees in rural Northland are portals to the past, present, and future of Earth’s climate.

This story is part of Down to Earth, a new Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis.

In February 2019, Mark Magee was scraping the bucket of his 45-ton excavator through a hillside when it hit something 30 feet down that wouldn’t budge.

It was high summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and Magee, a construction foreman, was clearing a platform for a new geothermal power plant near Ngāwhā, a tiny community in New Zealand’s Northland region, the long peninsula that stretches from the city of Auckland to the country’s northern tip.

He called in additional digger drivers to help. Gradually, as the machines peeled away the mudstone encasing the obstinate object, they realized it was a tree — and not an ordinary tree. More and more of it appeared, a seemingly endless log. When it lay uncovered, complete with a medusa-like rootball, it measured 65 feet long and 8 feet across, and weighed 65 tons.

Report: New Zealand announces emergency due to climate change

Free News discusses New Zealand announces emergency due to climate change.

New Zealand has joined 30 states in declaring an emergency in the country due to the threat of climate change. According to research, this island nation will be particularly affected by global warming.

The New Zealand government has launched a new initiative. It requires government agencies to be carbon neutral by 2025. This is proposed to be done in part by eliminating coal as fuel and purchasing electric vehicles by employees. The initiative was announced as part of introducing an emergency regime due to climate change in the country.

From recycling to ditching the car: what will really save the planet

Stuff discusses from recycling to ditching the car: what will really save the planet.

Reducing our use of petrol and diesel cars is one of the most effective things we can do to prevent climate change – but the message is failing to get through to many Kiwis, the Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority (EECA) has discovered.

The government agency surveyed 700 New Zealanders, asking them to rank the effectiveness of nine actions, ranging from flying less and ditching plastic to buying organic food, on greenhouse emissions.

Just two out of five respondents thought cutting back on petrol and diesel car use would have a high impact on climate change. Even fewer people – just 32 per cent – reported they were putting this principle into practice.

New Zealand’s school climate-change curriculum vexes farmers

Thomson Reuters Foundation discusses why New Zealand’s school climate-change curriculum vexes farmers. New course this year points to intensive agriculture as one cause of greenhouse gases and includes advice to eat less dairy and meat.

A new school curriculum in New Zealand that tells students how to tackle climate change deniers and advises them to eat less dairy and meat has upset its farming community, which makes up the backbone of the country’s economy.

Farmers say they feel targeted by the new course, adding to frustrations over a centre-left coalition government push for them to reduce carbon emissions and clean up waterways, part of a plan for the country to be carbon neutral by 2050.

Launched in January and aimed at secondary school students in a country that celebrates its 100% pure image, the course is based on material from leading science agencies and explains the impact of climate change and how students can contribute.

Climate change: lakes and rivers will become drier, increasingly infectious and toxic

Stuff discusses how lakes and rivers will become drier, increasingly infectious and toxic as a result of climate change.

By dragging our feet on climate action, we increasingly condemn our beloved lakes and rivers to a future of salmonella contamination, algal blooms, species extinctions and drying out, a new report warns.

Our Freshwater 2020, produced by the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics NZ, is a stark reminder that the already-threatened health of our waterways rests on our ability to urgently shift away from fossil fuels.

Even if emissions stay at historically low levels, temperatures will continue to rise in the coming decades, due to the lag between releasing greenhouse gas and the effects on our atmosphere, seas and waterways.

As the climate warms, rain storms will intensify, snowfall will decrease, glaciers will melt, soils will dry out and the sea level will rise – each affecting our lakes and rivers.

New Zealand calls for thousands of new ‘green’ jobs in bold comeback plan

Mother Nature Network (MNM) discusses how New Zealand calls for thousands of new ‘green’ jobs in bold comeback plan.

There’s plenty of speculation over the origins of the pandemic that has ground much of the world to a halt. But there’s little doubt about who caused it. As a panel of international scientists noted in a release issued this week, “There is a single species that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic — us.”

The statement — authored by professors Josef Settele, Sandra Díaz, Eduardo Brondizio and zoologist Peter Daszak — goes on to point the finger squarely at our obsession with “economic growth at any cost.”

“Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of wild species have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people.”

Now, the real question is how do we make things right in the world, while avoiding the mistakes that brought us here in the first place? At least one major political party thinks it has the answer.

Report: Modest drop in greenhouse gases shows scale of challenge

Stuff discusses how a modest drop in greenhouse gases shows the scale of New Zealand’s challenge.

New Zealand’s emissions have fallen a smidge – by a grand total of one per cent – in the latest official tally, revealing just how far we have to go to be carbon neutral by 2050. The economy grew just over 3 percent over the same time, meaning New Zealand grew a little more efficient.

The official figures take more than a year to prepare, so the numbers out today are complete to the end of 2018.

Farming and road vehicles remain the biggest drivers of rising emissions in recent decades – but a new way of calculating the impact of animal dung and urine saw livestock emissions shrink by four percent in the latest count. Actual farming emissions did not drop, said the Ministry for Primary Industries, but they are now counted more accurately, giving a smaller total.

Big Science: Can we stop Antarctica’s collapse?

This New Zealand Herald article discusses whether we can stop Antarctica’s collapse.

As part of five-part series on major new Kiwi research projects, science reporter Jamie Morton talks to GNS Science’s Associate Professor Nancy Bertler about the fate of West Antarctica.

It’s the big white elephant in climate change’s room: a vast Antarctic ice sheet that could collapse and lift oceans by metres – if only we could prevent it.

The irreversible collapse of Antarctica’s ice sheets remains the largest uncertainty in projections of future sea level rise, with the potential to displace hundreds of millions of people.

West Antarctica is especially vulnerable, as much of its ice sheet – locking up an equivalent five metres of sea level rise – overlies a warming ocean.

Scientists estimate that it’s been shedding nearly 150 billion of tonnes of mass each year since 2005.

Why municipal waste-to-energy incineration is not the answer to NZ’s plastic waste crisis

This The Conversation article discusses why municipal waste-to-energy incineration is not the answer to NZ’s plastic waste crisis.

New Zealand is ranked the third-most-wasteful country in the OECD. New Zealanders produce five times the global daily average of waste per person – and they are getting more wasteful, producing 35% more than a decade ago.

These statistics are likely to get worse following China’s 2018 ban on imports of certain recyclable products. China was the world’s top importer of recyclable plastics, but implemented the ban because it could no longer safely manage its domestic and imported waste. Unsurprisingly, in 2015, China was named the top source of marine plastic pollution in the world.

Since the Chinese market closed, 58% of New Zealand’s plastic waste now goes to Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam — all countries with weak regulations and high rankings as global sources of marine plastic pollution.

Waste-to-energy (WtE) incineration has been raised as a solution. While turning plastic waste into energy may sound good, it creates more pollution and delays a necessary transition to a circular economy.