Jake

By Sahra Kress, community midwife, 8 October 2022

“When we lose the Earth, if we lose the Earth,
oh how desperately we will long to go back to how it was.
 How we will wish that we had not taken all of this for granted”

Peter Kalmus, NASA scientist

And how we will wish that we had taken things more seriously, that we had absorbed the meaning of all the endless data and careful analyses, and that we had actually, collectively, taken responsibility.

These notes are my brief reflection on the bizarre climate predicament we are in: a slow-moving force that is pushing against the wall of our normality, which will push and push and at some point- our normality is going to crumble. What is the point of striving in the face of this? Solutions are very limited, so let’s talk about responses, and the meaning of sufficiency, and what living with simplicity might actually offer.

Burning urgency

The climate crisis is here. The ecological emergency is here. It is not something remote or possible in the future: ‘global weirding’ has become an everyday news reality and we are seeing unprecedented events becoming normal.

[Read more…] about Reflections on Sufficiency and Simplicity

By Paul Callister, 3 October 2022

Kāpiti consists of a series of villages and towns linked by the main state highway and the main trunk railway line. Many of the settlements were originally built near or around a railway station. The flat topography, transport layout and generally good weather means that most areas of housing are within relatively easy biking distance of shops and transport hubs.

Could our villages lead the transformation in Aotearoa New Zealand away from car dependency to a cycling friendly society? Could we match the rates of cycling seen in Holland, and increasingly in cities such as London, Paris and New York?  Towns and cities all over the world are being redesigned to encourage safe cycling. But in Holland it was not always like that. The campaign for safer cycling began in the 1930s.

[Read more…] about How Kāpiti could become the Holland of the South

By Graeme Mills, 30 September 2022

A potential wind electricity-generating project exists on the hills above Paekākāriki. The objective of the project is to provide renewable energy to the village of Paekākāriki, with surplus energy distributed via the local line network to other parts of Kāpiti.

It is hoped that the community would have an opportunity to invest in the Project and contribute to NZ’s sustainability targets in a meaningful way. However, it is unlikely (but not impossible) that the community would be able to fully fund the Project, and it would need a ‘cornerstone investor’ to make it happen, and to operate it on the electricity market. The total capital cost would be between $15 M and $20 M.

The project involves up to 5 wind turbines, with a combined output of 4.5 MW. We started taking wind speed measurements in 2014. The results of this and feasibility studies also undertaken confirmed that the project is a realistic opportunity and a competitive contender in the NZ electricity market.

[Read more…] about The Paekākāriki Wind Generation Project

By Sahra Kress, Community Midwife, 20 September 2022

As a midwife, I have witnessed amazingly diverse births over the last 18 years, ranging from births in the hinterlands of Papua New Guinea, in the slum hospital of Vanuatu, to grass huts in the Solomon Islands. I have attended births on the linen couches of gorgeous New Zealand homes, in house-trucks, ambulances, or with the urgency of lithotomy beds or operating tables. But the unique and exceptional circumstances of this birth I could never have expected.

It was a strikingly beautiful sunny afternoon. I was looking after my two nephews, three and five years old, and as usual we headed out into nature- our favourite thing to do together. We decided to go to Ngā Manu (A nature reserve near Waikanae, Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand), largely because the three-year-old had been talking for months about the tuatara at Ngā Manu who we saw twice “sitting in his puddle and sticking his tongue out!” Somehow, my nephew just thought this was hysterical and it became a sort of joke each time he saw me.

[Read more…] about An Extraordinary Birth Witnessed at Ngā Manu

Dr Kirsty Wild, The University of Auckland 15 September 2022

Amongst all the debate about what social changes might stick post Covid, perhaps the most promising development so far seems to be the re-evaluation of how (and indeed if) we want to work.  The campaign for a four-day working week has received a welcome boost. 

The wellbeing benefits of reduced working hours are perhaps obvious, but the environmental benefits are less appreciated.  In general, we need time to learn many of the skills that underlie lower-carbon habits, e.g. vegetarian cooking, or experimenting with commuting using ‘slower’ transport modes like walking, cycling.  But unravelling our long hours work culture also provides important opportunities to break the cycle of extreme work and extreme leisure that encourages leisure flying. 

[Read more…] about Could a shorter working week help us to reduce flying?