Bad weather delays emissions-cutting plan

Life in New Zealand: Climate change is forcing a delay to climate change work. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The Kākā

TL;DR: It never rains but it pours. The Government has just had to delay moves by our biggest city to embed housing densification into its plans because of bad weather, even though densification is one of the main ways we can reduce climate emissions. We’re chasing our tail, and we’re losing.

Elsewhere below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers:

• the Reserve Bank looks more deeply at why interest rate cuts lift house prices;

• the Climate Commission calls bullshit on the Government’s climate policies (without using the word bullshit¹);

• Stats NZ appears to have failed again to count Māori properly;

• Food producers call bullshit on Foodstuffs and Woolworths profit margins;

• Old home owners in Blockhouse Bay tell poor young families there’s no room left in their suburb for them (but they’re quite keen on all the population growth keeping their taxes low and Uber rides cheap);

• Our gross climate emissions fell for a second year because we had fewer cows, but not much else; and,

• MBIE thinks the hydro battery we need to get through dry winters with near-100% renewable power, Lake Onslow, won’t be filled until 2040, even if we decide to spend $16 billion building it, which, by the way, is way too late to help cut our emissions enough in the next eight years to meet our international obligations (and therefore avoid spending up to $24 billion on emissions credits overseas.)

What’s news in our political economy at 10 am