Climate Change: Advice it was right to ignore

A story on Scoop from NZ Energy and Environment Business Week about how the government had "ignored advice" when setting its methane target caught my eye last night. The story is based on a week-old press release from National climate denial spokesperson Todd Muller, and highlights the difference between the recommendations of the Climate Change Chief Executives Board - a collection of public sector CEOs - and the government's final position on methane targets. Reading the actual paper, the CEOs noted that the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change had recommended cuts to methane emissions of between 22 and 47% by 2050 were required to stabilise the climate and avoid more than 1.5 degrees of warming. Despite this, they then recommended a lower target. Their reasoning?

In respect of the range presented for the biogenic methane target, 22% represents the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s assessment of the reduction in livestock methane emissions required by 2050 below 2016 levels to prevent additional warming from these emissions. 35% represents the midpoint of the range for agricultural methane set out in the IPCC special report. Analysis suggests that this range of emissions reductions is feasible.

The range reflects the differing views of departments on the trade-offs involved in the target decision, and that specific targets have not been tested with the agriculture sector.

[Emphasis added]

So, despite everything that is happening, despite the planet literally catching fire in front of us, public sector CEOs are still recommending doing as little as possible to solve the crisis, due to (economic) trade-offs. Which is unsurprising, really: its the same narrow circle of thought that got us into this mess, and the same advice they've been giving for decades, and changing their minds now would mean implicitly admitting they were wrong. And so public sector arse covering means doubling down on failure rather than admit error.

But snark at our failed public sector "leadership" aside, what this really is is a case of the government deciding to listen to the IPCC - the acknowledged international experts in the field - rather than a bunch of business managers. And that's a perfectly reasonable decision. When it conflicts with the IPCC, the advice of the NZ public service is most definitely advice that should be ignored.

"Oversight"

New Zealand's spy agencies are supposedly subject to the rigorous oversight of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, an independent watchdog appointed to keep an eye on them and ensure they don't break the law again. But that watchdog depends entirely on the agencies they are overseeing for the information required to oversee them - and it turns out that they are simply refusing to provide it [paywalled]:

The watchdog for New Zealand's spy agencies was thwarted for months when trying to see secret emails about a controversial NZSAS raid in Afghanistan - and says she is prepared to use a legal summons if they continue to frustrate her legal duty.

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Cheryl Gwyn was eventually given access to "several tens of thousands of emails" - then discovered another 115,000 were apparently overlooked.

Gwyn was given an explanation as to how the emails were missed but has now sought independent advice to establish if more might be missing.

The SIS and GCSB had been quibbling over the Inspector-General's powers. But the law is crystal clear on that: they must be given access to all security records that they consider to be relevant, and "security record" is defined in the broadest possible terms. Which makes you wonder why the spies were trying this on. What were they trying to hide from the public's watchdog? And even the most charitable interpretation - a mix of incompetence and obsessive secrecy - doesn't exactly give confidence.

The spy agencies have highly intrusive powers. It is vital that those powers are kept in check. If the spies aren't going to cooperate with that, then I think we need to reconsider what we let them do.

Why hasn't New Zealand been building more wind farms?

New Zealand needs to decarbonise its electricity supply, while also increasing it to cope with the extra demand from electric vehicles. Wind energy is an obvious solution for this: we have an excellent wind resource, and its cheaper than fossil fuels. Yet we haven't been building it. Why not? One reason is that demand has been decreasing lately, so we haven't needed to. But an article on Newsroom also offers another reason:

Without storage wind electricity producers will accept prices given to them. For companies with fossil fuel plants this drives down the price their fossil-fuelled electricity can demand, as well as not making them much money.

For electricity companies who have gas or other non-hydro facilities, wind risks driving their profits down.

“That’s my theory why no one was doing it. You would need a new company to come in and build it whereas if an existing company built a wind farm it would be eating into its profits.”

Our two biggest electricity gentailers are Genesis and Contact. They're also the two with the highest investment in fossil fuels: Genesis owns Huntly (which it infamously is reneging on shutting down or going coal free), and Contact owns the Stratford power station in Taranaki. So they have no incentive to build wind farms, and unsurprisingly, they haven't. Instead, its all been built by Mercury and Meridian, who are exclusively renewable. Even then though they don't want to build too much, because everyone gets paid the price of the marginal supply, and if that's fossil, then they get more money than if its wind or hydro. Once again, the invisible hand of the market is figuring out ways to screw us (and the planet) rather than making life better.

As for how to fix it, the solution is obvious: a generation-focused SOE with the specific purpose of building wind plants to expand supply and drive fossil fuels out of the market. Basicly, a "KiwiWind". The more renewables we have, the less coal and gas gets burned, and that in turn drives up the price (because the fixed costs of the generator must be recouped over less time), which provides stronger financial incentives for industrial users to avoid high spot prices by changing demand patterns. We don't need much to set up a virtuous cycle here - maybe 500 MW of generation to monster the market and exile coal and gas to dry year / dead of winter backup. And that's not that expensive: wind energy costs ~$1.5 million / MW of installed generation, so we're talking about $750 million over five years, or an investment of about $150 million a year. Its not peanuts, but its not huge either, and if they do the maths right, pays for itself through electricity sales.

If the government is serious about its renewables target, and doesn't want to just leave it to the market, it needs to invest to make it happen. If they fail to do this, we can draw our own conclusions about their seriousness.

Strikes work

When teachers demanded more time and more money to do their jobs, Education Minister Chris Hipkins was adamant: there was no more money and they should expect disappointment. No, after a joint strike and facing five weeks of rolling stoppages, he's suddenly found an extra quarter of a billion dollars to provide an offer the PPTA likes:

The government has announced a new deal aimed at breaking the deadlock with teachers, which Education Minister Chris Hipkins says unions will recommend to their members.

Mr Hipkins said a key element of the revised deal is a unified base salary scale for all primary, secondary and area school teachers and will restore parity between primary and secondary school teachers.

"I'm now confident this will draw the matter to a close," Mr Hipkins said.

The offer also includes a lump sum payment of $1500 for union members and a new top step salary rate of $90,000.

Whether this is enough for teachers is up to them. But they would never have forced Hipkins to the table if they hadn't stood up for their rights and gone on strike. Strikes work! Which is why its so obscene that the "Labour" government wants to continue to deny that right to film workers so Hollywood can keep them in serfdom.

Equality comes to Ecuador

Ecuador's Constitutional Court has legalised same-sex marriage:

Ecuador's highest court has approved same-sex marriage in a landmark ruling in the traditionally Catholic country.

The vote at the nine-member Constitutional Court came as they ruled on the lawsuits by two same-sex couples who wanted to get married.

Five voted in favour, arguing all people were equal. Four said the issue had to be debated in parliament.

Interestingly, Ecuador's constitution has an explicit bigot amendment restricting marriage to opposite genders. The Constitutional Court has effectively over-ruled that. Its an interesting development, which suggests that where there are existing anti-discrimination clauses or binding international agreements (in this case the American Convention on Human Rights), such clauses might not be as useful as bigots think.

Climate Change: National commits to failure

National released a policy document on the primary sector today, in which they commit to ensuring farmers do not have to do anything to reduce emissions:

On climate change, National recommends farmers remain outside the ETS, while critics such as Greenpeace have charged dairying in particular has so far been given a free pass for climate pollution.

National said it had concerns with the proposed methane target of 24-47 per cent reduction by 2050, recently set by the Coalition Government.

"In our view it is exactly the sort of decision the newly formed scientific Climate Commission should provide advice on, rather than politicians cherry picking numbers."

Remaining outside the ETS means that farmers face absolutely no incentive to reduce their emissions. Not facing any target does the same. And the result will be that emissions will continue to rise, making it impossible for us to meet any credible climate change target. Its basicly a commitment to burn the planet so their dirty, polluting supporters can keep on profiting for a few more years. But its also a commitment to unfairness, for the majority of us who live in cities and who pay for our emissions already to subsidise a tiny rural minority so they can keep on polluting. It is neither moral nor sensible.

As for the contention that farmers don't have any way to reduce emissions, sure they do: they can reduce their herd sizes. That's not the end of the world, and there's some evidence its more profitable (in that farmers don't have to waste money on fertiliser and supplementary feed to support higher intensity). If they don't want to do that, then they deserve to go out of business.

Climate Change: Time to fix the RMA

OMV's application for resource consent for drilling offshore exploration wells has highlighted a major flaw in our environmental legislation. Climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, is our most pressing environmental threat. But the EPA, which is deciding the application, is specifically forbidden from considering "the effects on climate change of discharging greenhouse gases into the air". And their legislation echoes a wider problem with the RMA, where local authorities are told they must have regard to the effects of climate change when carrying out their functions - except when it comes to deciding on greenhouse gas emissions. It is, as gareth Hughes points out, a ludicrous situation. The good news is that the government may be planning to fix it.

Last year, the government announced a two-step process for RMA reform Buried in the Cabinet paper on the issue (in paragraphs 83 - 87) was a note that this was a priority for change:

Addressing climate change is a high priority for this Government. There could be significant benefits in elevating the importance of climate change within the RMA framework, so that decision-makers are able to fully consider both the effects of climate change on development (adaptation), and the effects of development on climate change (mitigation).

I am therefore proposing to reconsider the role of the RMA in relation to climate change in Stage 2 of the review of the RMA. This will provide the best opportunity for any changes to be carefully worked through.

We have these absurd provisions due to past governments saying "we will deal with climate change nationally" (and then refusing to deal with it in any meaningful way). There's now a greater awareness that price-based measures like the ETS are not the only way, and that they need to be backed up with other policies to reduce or limit emissions. The RMA is a useful tool to do that, and it is long past time we started using it. The Greens have promised that they'll be working to get their coalition partners to support restoring climate change management to the RMA; if we want emissions to reduce, we need to back them up on this.

Farmers are still poisoning Canterbury

In 2018, ECan decided to "solve" the problem of farmers poisoning the water with nitrates by raising nitrate limits so they could make the problem disappear. Of course, this didn't fix anything. Instead, its still getting worse:

In Canterbury, polluting nitrates were on the and risk maps the regional council was relying on were out of date, Forest and Bird said.

Using the council's own data, the environmental group created its own map, which it said showed an increasing number of private wells had nitrate levels above the safe standard for drinking water.

Forest and Bird freshwater advocate Annabeth Cohen said the last time the regional council, Environment Canterbury (ECan), updated its risk map for drinking water wells nearly 1.5 years ago.

She said analysis done on test results since then showed an increase in the number of wells where it was unsafe to drink the water due to nitrate levels, in Hurunui, Ashburton and possibly Selwyn.

This is a direct threat to human health. As the article points out, high nitrate concentrations have been linked to colorectal cancer. Failing to control nitrates means more people will die. But ECan apparently doesn't care about that. Instead, they're still grovelling to the sacred cow, and perfectly willing to kill people to keep dairy farmers in business.

Googling OIA requesters violates the Privacy Act

I saw an interesting article from FOIMan - a UK-based fredom of information site - on the subject of agencies googling requesters. This is apparently a common practice, but their short advice is "don't": its not just creepy and intimidating, it also almost certainly violates UK privacy legislation:

what’s your lawful basis? An individual’s FOI request, their identity, biographical information about them is personal data. You need a lawful basis to justify the handling of personal data – including searching for information about someone online. I presume you’ve completed a legitimate interest assessment and successfully justified how your need to know whether or not someone is a journalist outweighs the rights and freedoms of requesters? Even if you decide that you do have such a basis, are you otherwise complying with the requirements of the GDPR? Are you telling requesters that if they make a request it will result in the council looking them up online?

I'm aware anecdotally that New Zealand agencies also do this. But New Zealand has similar legislation, and the same logic applies here. Privacy Principle 1 requires that agencies only collect information "for a lawful purpose connected with a function or activity of the agency". And its difficult to imagine a lawful purpose for digitally spying on a requester in this way. Their motives or how they may use the requested information are not relevant to how a request should be processed. Their political views and whether they may be a journalist or a critic of the government explicitly are not. Requests should be processed without regard to such factors (sadly, as we all know, they are not). The fact that information about a requester is publicly available doesn't change that in the slightest: there must be a lawful purpose for collection before the question of public availability is even considered.

So, next time you get an OIA request, don't google them. Don't be curious - be professional instead.

New Fisk

While the world watches Donald Trump, it’s missing what’s really going on with US foreign policy
Bloated bodies in the Nile show Sudan protesters were right to fear the arrival of Saudi and UAE money

Britain's criminal spies

Last month, we learned that MI5 had "compliance issues" around its data storage, and is retaining information for longer than necessary in violation of the law. But it turns out that its worse than that: they've been obtaining spy warrants on the basis of false information:

MI5 has lost control of its data storage operations and has been obtaining surveillance warrants on the basis of information it knows to be false, the high court has heard.

The security agency has been accused of “extraordinary and persistent illegality” in a legal challenge brought by the human rights organisation Liberty.

The failures have been identified by the official watchdog, the investigatory powers commissioner, Lord Justice Fulford, and admitted in outline by the home secretary, Sajid Javid.

[...]

In written submissions, Jaffey said: “Fulford’s generic warrant decision notes that warrants were issued to MI5 on a basis that MI5 knew to be incorrect and the judicial commissioners [the watchdogs] were given false information.”

There's more here, but the short version is that MI5 has never complied with the Investigatory Powers Act, and the "safeguards" the government promised when enacting it were bypassed by deceit. Which ought to be a warning to every democracy about granting powers to spies. Meanwhile, the IPC has said that until MI5 improves its data handling, applications for spy warrants will not be approved. Hopefully that will provide them with an incentive to sort their shit out.

(In NZ, sadly, the government response to this sort of issue would be to change the law to retrospectively legalise this criminal behaviour, while allowing the spies to do whatever they want).

Botswana decriminalises homosexuality

Botswana's High Court has ruled that colonial laws outlawing homosexuality are unconstitutional:

High court judges in Botswana have ruled that laws criminalising same-sex relations are unconstitutional and should be struck down, in a major victory for gay rights campaigners in Africa.

Jubilant activists in the packed courtroom cheered the unanimous decision, which came a month after a setback in Kenya when a court rejected an attempt to repeal similar colonial-era laws.

“Human dignity is harmed when minority groups are marginalised,” Justice Michael Leburu said as he delivered the judgment. “Sexual orientation is not a fashion statement. It is an important attribute of one’s personality.”

[...]

“A democratic nation is one that embraces tolerance, diversity, and open-mindedness … societal inclusion is central to ending poverty and fostering shared prosperity … The state cannot be a sheriff in people’s bedrooms,” Leburu said.

Good. And hopefully this ruling will be echoed in other countries suffering under the homophobic legacy of British colonialism.

Another industry no-one wants to be a part of

We see regular stories from farmers and orchards complaining that no-one wants to work long hours in terrible conditions for poor pay in their shitty industry. And now, its fishers. But in the process, they neatly explain why:

"It's a hard existence. There is a reasonable amount of risk, they're away from home on a small vessel, living conditions aren't necessarily fantastic, and their ability to enjoy some of the other things in life, like play rugby, tends to become quite difficult.

"I just don't think younger people are prepared to make that commitment."

Or, to put it another way: if you are crew on a fishing boat, you don't get to have a life, or friends, or a partner. There's just a job, which pays the princely sum of $50,000 a year. Which you can get on land, without the danger or the long hours or the shit working conditions which stop you from having a life.

So yeah, its not surprising at all that no-one wants to work for them. And that's without considering the industry's reputation for being full of criminals and using slave labour. Like farming, its an industry that no-one who is not already part of their cult would ever want to be a part of.

Climate Change: A climate emergency in Auckland

New Zealand's largest city has just declared a climate emergency. And its not just a symbolic move:

While the declaration is largely symbolic, it signals the start of a more urgent and focussed approach by councillors to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

The council separately agreed to seek public views on an "action framework" that could lead to costed initiatives in next year's budget.

That framework is here. It proposes specific actions to reduce emissions and increase resiliance to climate change. If you live in Auckland, I suggest you read and submit on it.

Meanwhile, Auckland's declaration again raises the question: when will Parliament follow? If you'd like to urge MPs to declare a climate emergency, there's a petition to do so here. Sign it and share it.

Finally

New Zealand troops are coming home from Iraq next year. Good. Their mission there was never moral, and seems to have involved directly assisting the Iraqi army in a murderous war, as well as assisting the US with mass biometric surveillance and doing fuck knows what out in the desert. And all to support a corrupt, torturing regime which turned out to be little better than the one the US overthrew. The big problem with the withdrawal is that it isn't happening quick enough. To point out the obvious, the US seems to be gearing up for a war with Iran, and Iraq will likely be a major battlefield in that. In which case I hope NZDF has an emergency evacuation plan to get our people out if that looks like kicking off. Or is their plan to drag their feet, in th hope of being "unavoidably" involved in order to suck up to the US?

The OIA and Parliamentary Privilege

Immediately after being elected in 2017, the government started playing bullshit games over answers to written parliamentary questions. Since those games seemed to be systematic, I asked the likely culprit - Chris Hipkins - whether he'd given advice to other Ministers on how to answer questions, and if so, for copies of that advice. The request was refused, so I complained to the Ombudsman. And in the process of that complaint, the Minister's office tried to deny the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman over the matter, citing Parliamentary Privilege. Written questions are a proceeding in Parliament,and so could not be questioned before any court or tribunal - including the Ombudsman. While I eventually got a ruling, there was a lot of uncertainty about the interaction of the OIA and the 2014 Parliamentary Privilege Act, so I asked the Ombudsman and the Speaker to publish some guidelines on the issue so we would all know where we stood. The guidelines are now online here. The short version:

Official information cannot be withheld just because it constitutes parliamentary proceedings.

The PPA does not provide a reason for withholding such information. Releasing it under the OIA would not be ‘contrary to’ the PPA. Nor would it ‘derogate’ from the PPA.

[...]

However, neither Article 9 nor the PPA prevent the Ombudsman from carrying out their investigative role under the OIA, in relation to complaints about the withholding of information that constitutes parliamentary proceedings.

The Speaker of the House has said he does not see a general conflict arising from the Ombudsman performing the duties of that office, including conducting investigations into the withholding of official information that may also be a proceeding of the House

So Chris Hipkins' attempt to undermine the OIA failed. As for the specific request? Well, that failed too, as advice on answering questions is immediate and informal and so needs to be protected as "free and frank" to prevent Ministers and their officials from refusing to document it. Or, to put it another way: the threat that Ministers and officials may behave unprofessionally justifies protecting them when they behave unprofessionally. As someone who believes in accountability, I find this logic utterly perverse. Unmentioned in the summary in the guide is that parliament also supposedly holds itself to account. But given that those same bullshit games are continuing, how about that actually happens, rather than the theoretical possibility being used to protect the powerful?

Correction: The Minister's office did not try to invoke Parliamentary Privilege over this issue, or deny the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman considered the matter as a general issue on his own initiative. The issue had arisen in another complaint I had also made, and I had confused the two.

Climate Change: End pollution subsidies now

When National gutted the ETS in 2009, one of the ways they did it was to hand out huge subsidies to big polluters. Now the climate crisis is here, but the polluters want their subsidies to continue:

The latest climate pleaders to Government are seven of our largest manufacturers. Under the auspices of Business New Zealand, Fonterra, NZ Steel, Rio Tinto, NZ Refining, Golden Bay Cement, Methanex and Pan Pac Forest Products are arguing for more subsidies and an even easier ride in the Emissions Trading System than they have enjoyed over the past decade.

[...]

The seven big industrial emitters are the prime beneficiaries of a decade-old fudge of policies designed to minimise the impact of the ETS on companies that are emissions intensive and trade exposed, or EITE for short.

From the companies’ perspective, the policies were a triumph. The ETS has been essentially meaningless to them. The reductions they have made in energy use and emissions would have been good business practice and commercially beneficial anyway.

The highly favourable treatment they have received has come at a considerable cost to many other businesses and the country at large. In 2017, 82 emitters out of the 300 companies with direct obligations in the ETS qualified for free credits under the EITE rules. They received 5.6 million free credits, equal to 20 percent of the 28.6m units all companies surrendered to meet obligations.

This isn't just a huge financial cost and distortion to the ETS - it also means those polluters have no incentive to reduce their emissions (in fact, its the opposite: the more they pollute, the bigger the subsidy). And this in turn has significantly reduced the effectiveness of the scheme. When a huge chunk of the market just gets handed free credits, it reduces the value for everyone.

As for what to do about it, the answer is clear: we need to end these subsidies now. These polluters have had a decade of special treatment, and that's a decade too long. And if they can't survive without this government subsidy, they deserve to go out of business and be replaced by more efficient producers who can.

Will NZ Post sabotage local body elections?

School board of trustees elections were held last week. Unfortunately, NZ Post seems to have sabotaged them:

Voting in the triennial elections for most school boards closed at noon on Friday, June 7.

But Ponsonby Primary School principal Dr Anne Malcolm said most of her parents did not receive their voting papers until about 2pm on Thursday, giving them less than 24 hours to read the candidates' statements and get their votes in.

She put the blame squarely on "NZ Post inefficiency".

"They sent the voting papers out on Monday May 27," she said.

"It took 11 days for NZ Post to get mail into our letterboxes in the centre of Auckland, from Wellington, which is absolutely abhorrent."

NZ Post says its delivery time for standard mail is three days. Clearly, that's bullshit. And in this case, institutions who relied on it in good faith to run an election are paying the price. That stinks, but its going to get worse. Because, to point out the obvious, local body elections are being held later this year - and they run on a postal vote. According to the Electoral Commission, voting papers will be sent out from September 20, with polling closing at midday on October 12 - meaning there is just 3 weeks for voting. From NZ Post's observed performance, that's probably enough time for people to get their ballot papers - but possibly not enough time for them to be returned by post, especially if people take time to consider their votes. Which means that if you want your vote to count, you will need to physically drop it off at your local council, rather than trusting it to the mail.

NZ Posts shitness now seems to be posing a real threat to our democracy. Perhaps Parliament (through the Justice Committee?) might want to look into that, and see what can be done to fix it?

Time for some accountability

The Herald (paywalled) reports that the GCSB called the Beehive to try and stop the government from announcing the Budget had been "hacked". Why? Because it was false, and they'd told Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf so. But instead, he lied to his Minister, and the public, in a pathetic and easily disproven exercise in arse-covering - and in the process caused his Minister to repeat his lies.

Once upon a time, before NeoLiberalism destroyed public service ethics, a chief executive would have offered to resign for this sort of thing. Makhlouf hasn't. That position is looking unsustainable. Ministers may tolerate chief executives lying to the public on their behalf - but lying to them is another matter entirely. Especially when the lies cause the Minister to put their foot in it.

As for what to do about it, the SSC has begun an investigation, but that investigation can have only one credible outcome: Makhlouf must be fired. Anything less and the entire system of accountability between Ministers and the public service breaks down.

And again: we pay public sector chief executives the big bucks because (they tell us) they are accountable and responsible and can be fired when they fuck up. We should get what we paid for. And if the buck doesn't actually stop there, then we shouldn't be giving it to them in the first place.

Getting what they paid for again

Our fishing industry is pervasively criminal, with widespread under-reporting, dumping, and other illegal behaviour. The most effective way of stopping this crime is to put cameras on fishing boats to watch catches as they are brought aboard, enabling under-reporting, dumping nad high-grading to be detected, punished, and deterred. But thanks to a corrupt Minister who has been openly bought by the fishing industry, we're not getting that. Instead, we're getting another bullshit trial scheme:

Commercial fishing vessels deemed at risk of encountering endangered Māui dolphins will be required to operate with on-board cameras, the prime minister has announced.

Jacinda Ardern said just over $17 million had been set aside in the Budget for the purchase, installation and maintenance of the cameras, which will be required from November 1.

The new camera requirement will affect a small fraction of the more than 1000 commercial fishing boats in the country.

...all of which already carry human observers. So, we'll be watching the people who are already watched, while the huge hive of criminal activity elsewhere goes unmonitored and unpunished. And we'll be paying for it, rather than the criminal fishers.

This is bullshit. And its another example of the fishing industry getting what it paid for: a PR stunt rather than real action to clean them up.