More wind

Southland seems to be shaping up as the latest center of windfarm development, with Trustpower announcing plans for a new wind farm at Otaraia, near Gore. Other reports suggest it will be at least 100 MW, confirming the trend towards larger farms. Trustpower is already seeking resource consent for a 200 MW farm at Mahinerangi near Dunedin, and Meridian has one farm under construction and is seeking resource consent for another. There's an obvious market for all this power in both the urban centres of Dunedin (and to a lesser extent, Invercargill), and the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter, but its unlikely to be of much direct benefit outside the South Island - the reason being that the Cook Strait Cable only has limited capacity. On the other hand, every MegaJoule of energy generated from wind is that much more water which can be stored in the South Island hydro lakes, so there is a significant benefit in improving security of supply as well as in meeting demand.

Trustpower will likely apply for resource consent for Otaraia in the middle of next year.

Fresh Python

Terry Jones: They have made a killing

New Fisk

The whole bloody thing was obscene

Fiji: now they're killing people

Fiji's coup has just gone from bad to worse. This morning, soldiers took a man to the Queen Elizabeth barracks in Suva for "questioning". He came out in a body bag. The soldiers, it seems, killed him during interrogation.

There's a name for this: murder. And those responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Unfortunately, a key task of Commodore Bainimarama's interim government is to ensure immunity for the military and prevent any prosecution for their abuses. So instead of facing the justice they deserve, Fiji's soldiers will be declared above the law and allowed to get away with murder.

Busy

No more bloggage today, as I have a wedding to go to in Wellington. Its an unusual wedding - a combined Thai Buddhist - Catholic bash - which involves one party having to succeed in three challenges in order to make it to the ceremony. As the person involved is ancestrally Scandanavian, I can't help but think of it as a bunch of Vikings raiding a temple, and I feel this sudden need for a horned helmet and an axe to wave.

Checks and balances

Last November, the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress in a mid-term landslide widely interpreted as a backlash against President Bush and the Iraq war. Today, they finally took power in Washington. Not only is this a historic day for the US in electing its first female Speaker of the House - it also marks the return of something absent from official Washington for the last four years: checks and balances. One of the roles of the US legislature is to act as a check on the power of the President, both in enacting leislation and through the committee oversight process. When the Republicans were in charge, this didn't happen - the White House had an iron grip, and Republican legislators didn't see any reason to question the President simply because he was torturing people and undermining constitutional and human rights. Now that is going to change - and hopefully it will make the White House very uncomfortable.

There's already been one sign of that discomfort: Harriet Miers, the White House counsel Bush laughably nominated to the Supreme Court, has resigned. I guess she didn't want to spend the next two years actually having to work...

Fiji: handing back power to yourself

Yesterday afternoon, military strongman Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama handed back executive power to President Ratu Josefa Iloilo. Iloilo has now appointed a new caretaker Prime Minister: Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama. So the Commodore has "handed back" power to himself (while apparently retaining military authority as well - talk about dangerous).

Apart from seeming like a sick joke, this is also illegal. The Yabaki decision inthe wake of the 2000 coup (which I talk about a little here makes it quite clear that Fiji's President canot arbitrarily sack the Prime Minister; they must either resign or lose a confidence vote in the House (or die, or lose their seat, but neither is the case). If Qarase takes this to court, he will win - though what relief the courts will be willing or able to offer is very much an open question.

Carnival of the Liberals

The 29th Carnival of the Liberals is now up at Daylight Atheism.

Fiji: wait and see

Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama has handed back executive power to President Ratu Josefa Iloilo. Now its a matter of waiting and seeing whether the President will recognise Qarase as Prime Minister, or repeat the mistake of the 2000 coup and try and replace him with an interim administration (an act subsequently found to be illegal by the Fijian courts). Fortunately, we won't have long to wait; there will be a press conference at 16:00 Fijian time (about now, in fact) at which he will hopefully make his position clear.

Update: The signs are not good; President Iloilo has endorsed the actions of the military and says he will appoint an interim government to hold elections. This will not stand up in court, and I expect Fijian NGOs to challenge it in the near future.

A Pravda moment

One of the signs of a shitty government is the excuses it uses to cover its embarrassments. And the Iraqi government has just come up with one of the worst ever with its claim that the hanging of Saddam Hussein was infiltrated by militias. Consider it for a minute: the hanging was carried out at a secret location under maximum security. And we're supposed to believe that "militias and outsiders" simply walked in without a fight and took over the execution in order to inflame sectarian tensions?

Pull the other one - it reads Pravda.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government claims to have arrested a guard over the video. But as with Abu Ghraib the crime seems not so much to be the abuse as the fact that it was all recorded for posterity. If they're truly concerned about "inflaming sectarian tensions", maybe they should be looking at the guards and government officials who abused and taunted the man whose neck they were about to break, rather than just the man who videoed it.

Fiji: Undermining the judiciary

Having seized executive authority and dissolved the legislature, Fiji's military regime has now turned its sights on the judiciary, suspending the Chief Justice and Chief Magistrate over "corruption, irregularities and gross inefficiency in the judicial system". Of course, he has no legal authority to do this, just as he has no legal authority to fire the CEO of the Fiji Sugar Cane Growers Council - but he has a gun, and that in his mind is all that matters.

Meanwhile, the director of Fiji's Human Rights Commission, who has recently taken a rather relaxed attitude to the intimidation, beating and abuse of those who speak out against the coup, has issued a simply shocking report [PDF] in which she declares that the coup was justified as the Qarase government was illegal. Under the same reasoning - that the appointment of the 2001 interim government, and therefore the 2001 elections, was illegal - every New Zealand government we have ever had would be illegal and a coup to overthrow them justified because of 1688 (and if not then, then 1660, or something even earlier). She also denounces as "foreign intervention" overseas backing of Fijian democracy and human rights NGOs which have criticised her. It's discouraging to see an organisation which is supposed to be an official voice for human rights turn to the dark side in this manner, and it will take the FHRC a long time to live this down.

New kiwi blog

NZ Human Rights Lawyer

Climate change: learning from Norway

Norway is taking a symbolic lead on tackling greenhouse gas emissions by announcing that it will be offsetting all official air travel. While this is mostly a symbolic move - official air travel is a tiny proportion of emissions - it sends a powerful signal to the public that the government is taking action and that they should too. The obvious question is, why isn't New Zealand doing this as well? And why, given Helen Clark's stated desire to put New Zealand at the front of international action on climate change, weren't we doing it already?

While we're on the subject, New Zealand could learn a lot from Norway on how to manage its greenhouse gas emissions. Like New Zealand, Norway has a strong reliance on renewable energy, and a lot of trees. Unlike New Zealand, it has used these advantages properly to put itself in an enviable emissions position. According to the UNFCCC's compilation of key GHG data [PDF, large], as of 2003 Norway has reduced its net equivalent emissions to 7.8% below 1990 levels, against a Kyoto target of a 1% increase. How has it achieved this miracle? Reading their latest National Communication [PDF], it seems that they have done everything we have not: put a price on carbon, included greenhouse gas emissions in planning requirements, and encouraged better forest management practices to improve sinks.

Norway introduced a carbon tax in 1991, at a variable rate ranging from 337 NOK (NZ$75 - 80) a ton on petrol to NOK 86 (NZ$20) a ton for the pulp and paper industry. This is heresy to policymakers in New Zealand, who have consistently stressed the need for economic instruments to impose a uniform price across the economy so as not to distort the market (and then argued against it because that would result in "leakage" of vulnerable sectors). The Norwegians don't care about that, and happily have different rates for different industries depending on economic importance and the perceived risk of leakage - and it works just fine. The main effect has been a significant improvement in energy efficiency and carbon intensity. Gross emissions have not fallen - but they have certainly risen at a much slower rate as new investments have been pushed towards efficient technology that reduces emissions and therefore costs. In the case of the oil industry (a major emitter, responsible for 28% of gross CO₂ emissions), the tax

...has contributed to reduce emissions from the offshore petroleum sector by 3 million tonnes CO₂ in 2000, equivalent to 5 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions in Norway. Given the lifetime of these measures and the increase in the sector's activity level, it is believed that the CO₂ tax has reduced the emissions level at least as much after 2000.

More recently, the Norwegian government has started taxing other greenhouse gases such as HFCs and PFCs, as well as waste going to landfills and incinerators. They have also introduced a pilot emissions trading scheme mirroring the ETS; large industries can either pay tax or be issued permits and face the market price. New gas-fired power stations (and many parts of the petroleum industry) are being incorporated into this scheme.

Greenhouse gas emissions are covered under Norway's Pollution Control Act, and require a discharge permit. This is almost always granted, due to the overlap with other policy instruments, but the Act allows the government to require technological improvements, and this has been used to ensure that planned gas-fired power stations are both efficient and will be able to make use of carbon capture and sequestration as it is developed.

The other half of Norway's emissions control miracle has been a 56% increase in forest sequestration since 1990. It is unclear from the report how this has been achieved - it speaks mostly of improved management practices - but coupled with the slower increase in emissions, it has meant a complete reversal. Norway will be a net seller of credits during CP1, with a ready-made market right next door in the EU.

Looking at Norway shows what New Zealand could have done if we had tried. As for why we didn't, there are two basic reasons. The first is that our governments have always been half-hearted about action, seeing it as requiring too great a political cost. The second has been our policy culture. Douglas, Kerr, and the other ideological leaders of the Revolution may be long gone, but their ideas continued to dominate policymaking long after their departure, resulting in an obsession with purist market solutions. New Zealand policymakers considered both regulation and economic instruments during the 90's, but it was always one or the other; we couldn't do both as that would be "double dipping". Likewise the emphasis on the "perfect solution" of a broad economic instrument imposing a universal price across the entire economy resulted in endless policy work over taxes and emissions trading and points of obligation and allocation mechanisms - none of which makes a difference to the actual outcome provided there is a price. Meanwhile, the perfectly workable approach we had in the early 1990's of treating greenhouse gases as pollutants under the RMA and requiring them to gain resource consent was rejected as inferior to the market solution and ultimately nobbled - despite there being no economic instrument in place. As a result, we had a ten-year gap in policy in which emissions were able to grow unchecked; the quest for the perfect was very much the enemy of the good.

Regulation may be inferior to economic instruments; unequal taxes may distort the economy. But the clear evidence from Norway is that they also work. Their policies may be impure, imperfect and compromised - but they get results. And that is what is important - not how closely your (theoretical, never-implemented) policies can mirror the theory in a first-year economics textbook.

Official absurdities

The instinctive response of the powerful to deny, deny, deny any allegations against them often produces amusing absurdities. But the best one in a while has to go to former SDL campaign director Jale Baba, who in response to allegations that his party had stuffed ballot boxes during Fiji's 2006 election, said:

"I will be taking Foster to court for taping our conversation at JJ's hotel which I strongly deny took place"

Of course, if it didn't take place, it can hardly have been taped, can it?

A new strategy

President Bush is set to reveal his new strategy for Iraq. Except that it's not new at all - rather its the same "strategy" of playing whack-a-mole with insurgents they're using at the moment, only with a few thousand extra troops in the line of fire. This isn't enough to make a difference (that would require more than doubling the number of US troops in Iraq), and there's no real idea of what those troops would actually do other than provide more targets for the resistance; instead lives will be squandered and people maimed simply so Bush can give the impression that he is Doing Something and put off the painful day when he is forced to admit defeat for another few months.

As reasons to die go, protecting the President's ego is a pretty piss-poor one. Isn't it time US troops finally stood up and said so,a nd refused to play along in the charade any more?

Cafe Review: Coco

Coco is a cafe devoted to one thing: chocolate. And they're quite good at it. For a start, they know that hot chocolate is best made from... hot chocolate (diluted with milk to reach the desired consistency), and that iced chocolate is not made by pouring milk into a glass with a little fudge sauce and hoping that Brownian motion will deal with the rest. Not a touch on Koko Black in Melbourne, but definitely trying.

Knowing my luck, they'll be bankrupt in six months.

2007 Bloggies

Nominations for the 2007 Bloggies are open. There is a best Australian and NZ category, so why not nominate some of your favourite NZ blogs?

Fiji: electoral fraud?

The Fijian military has released what it claims is evidence that the Fijian government gained power by electoral fraud, stuffing ballot boxes in key urban seats to ensure victory. Setting aside questions of whether it is real, or why a party official would be discussing such a plot with a famous international conman (OTOH, stranger things have happened), this is still no justification for the coup. And the reason for that is that there is a constitutional process for handling crimes like this.

Like New Zealand, Fiji's Electoral Act [RTF] contains a process for electoral petitions, by which a court can examine the conduct of a poll in an electorate, and if necessary, invalidate it. Unlike New Zealand, there seems to be no time limit on such petitions - though one is effectively set by the legal requirement to destroy all ballot papers a year after the polling date (which would be in May next year). The law also includes criminal penalties for precisely these crimes; a year in jail for falsely marking a ballot paper, and another year for putting it in the box, plus any ancillary offences due to acquiring the papers or abusing an official position. So all the military had to do if they suspected or had evidence of this sort of crime was pass it to the media or the opposition, and watch the shit hit the fan. If substantiated, the government would have fallen, and by-elections been called in the disputed seats. Instead, they chose to have a coup and dismiss the government at gunpoint - in the process undermining the very institution they now claim to be protecting.

Finally, it is worth noting that the conduct of the election was monitored by international observers from the EU and neighbouring states - and they noted no such problems. The EU missions's final report [PDF] notes significant problems with a new voter registration systemand the use of gerrymandered racial electorates which compromised the principle that every vote should count equally - but noted no problems with ballot box stuffing (and generally they do notice). OTOH, they did note irregularities with the reconciliation of votes and ballot boxes (including one electorate with a 101% turnout) which could mask such practices. Despite this - and allegations of fraud at the time - the FLP does not seem to have filed electoral petitions on the matter. Maybe this will give them an excuse.

Fiji: surrendering power?

Fiji's military regime is promising to return executive authority to President Ratu Josefa Iloilo sometime in the next two weeks, so he can appoint an interim government which will hold elections. Or at least that's the theory. But what if he doesn't cooperate in the appointment of an illegal regime? More importantly, this is going to present the military with another problem, in that if the elections are free and fair, they cannot control the outcome. What are they going to do if the public gives its mandate to the same people and policies they overthrew - or to a party promising prosecutions? Overthrow them as well?

3,000 American dead

So just days after the lynching of Saddam Hussein, the US death toll has hit 3,000. That's a tiny fraction of the number of Iraqi dead - estimated at 655,000 by the latest studies - but it is the only number that Americans seem to care about. And what have they died for? To end a "threat" which turned out not to exist. To replace one group of murdering torturers with another. To make Iraq, in the opinion of Iraqis, worse than it was under Saddam. But hey, Bush got re-elected and Haliburton got to rake in billions from reconstruction contracts, so it must have all been worth it, right?

These men and women did not die to protect America. They did not die to make Iraqis free, or Iraq a better place than it was when they found it. They died for the arrogance and viciousness and venality of their commander in chief. And they continue to die because that man cannot admit that he made a mistake.

No-one should have to die for that, and its long past time US troops stood up and said so, and refuse to participate in Bush's mad game of toy soldiers any longer.