Tuesday's pick o' the links

Can Auckland really increase walking & cycling 10-fold in seven years? It will depend on the Beehive agreeing to congestion charges & a lot more centralised funding; The Craic; Profundities etc

TLDR: Here’s a few useful links and juicy bits and pieces for paid subscribers that I gathered in my checks of various traps here and around the world between 4am and 10.30am this morning. See it all below the paywall fold.

Here in Aotearoa-NZ this morning

A 10-fold jump in walking and cycling in Auckland? In seven years?

Auckland Council released its proposed Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway plan yesterday, which sets out what is required to achieve a 64% reduction of the city's transport emissions by 2030. That includes a 10-fold increase in walking, cycling and scooter use, and a six-fold increase in bus, ferry and train use. In seven years!

Council will vote on it on Thursday. The pathway also requires a high uptake of Evs (32% of total vehicle kilometres travelled by 2030) and reductions in freight (45% by 2030), aviation (50% by 2030) and shipping (50% by 2030) emissions. Seriously? Mayor Phil Goff said he had been told it was achieveable… RNZ

“The public at the moment is saying to us, you need to do more and you need to do it faster. The crunch point comes of course when we start to affect the way people live.

"You've got to be prepared to make changes in your lifestyle in order for this to happen. So this will be a combination of incentives to make alternative forms of transport more attractive, but it will involve some pressure the other way, and things like congestion charging, obviously, that's going to have an impact.” Phil Goff via RNZ’s Checkpoint

Really? - Two things are required to make this work: congestion charging and an awful lot of new central Government funding, neither of which have been agreed. These are easy things for an outgoing Mayor and a bunch of councillors to say with a couple of months left on their term.

Justice_Queen @RE_MarketWatch

Researchers looked at 700 cities to measure policies that reduced carbon footprints. Infill housing had the biggest impact. coolclimate.berkeley.edu/ca-scenarios/i…

Just briefly

The Employment Court ruled Carter Holt Harvey was not entitled to make its workers take annual leave during the Covid-19 lockdown in April 2020 RNZ

CostCo has delayed its West Auckland store opening RNZ

More than 400 landlords were hauled before the Tenancy Tribunal in the past year for pocketing their tenants’ bonds at the start of a tenancy. Stuff

At least five Christchurch City Council candidates are receiving help from an anti-vaccination, anti-mandate group – including a woman who once said Covid was a 'giant scam' Stuff

Newsroom @NewsroomNZ

The Treasury argued for a slimmed down package of climate policies while a range of agencies pushed for more in this year's Budget. The Government landed somewhere in the middle

newsroom.co.nzClimate funding tussle ahead of BudgetThe Treasury argued for a slimmed down package of climate policies while a range of agencies pushed for more in this year’s Budget. The Government landed somewhere in the middle.

RNZ @radionz

The government reduced pay parity funding for early childhood teachers in its May Budget to keep its education spending within agreed limits, briefing documents show.

rnz.co.nzGovt cut pay parity funding for ECE teachers to balance books, documents revealThe government reduced pay parity funding for early childhood teachers in its May Budget to keep its education spending within agreed limits, briefing documents show.

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Useful longer reads and listens

Keith Lynch at Stuff has an explainer this morning on the 1,700 Covid deaths and a plea for individual stories to cover. This is welcome.

Alan Kohler, the Australian version of Bernard Hickey (Ha! I wish), has written this excellent piece on New Daily about monetary policy, money printing, poachers and gamekeepers.

Here’s a taste:

Towards the end of his new book, A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty writes that the only true limit to monetary policy is inflation.

‘‘… if inflation flares up,’’ he writes, ‘‘… then that means the limits of monetary creation have been reached and that it is time to rely on other tools to mobilise resources (starting with taxes).’’

Piketty also points out that the “monetary weapon” has been used frequently to save banks and bankers, but there is much more hesitation when it comes to saving the planet, reducing inequality and relieving the public authority of debt.

And here we are, with low rates having begotten lower rates, banks and bankers saved, the planet under threat, inequality much worse, debt out of control and inflation flaring up.

And once again central banks, including Lowe’s Reserve Bank, have kept extreme monetary policies in place for too long, against Borio’s advice. Now they are groping hurriedly for the neutral interest rate, at which the economy hums along, neither too fast nor too slow, but just right, while trying to persuade us, and themselves, that this time they’re going to hit it perfectly and then tighten the screws just enough. Alan Kohler via The New Daily

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Video of the day

The 'kite' that pulls energy out of the sky BBC

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Profundities, curiosities, spookies and feel-goods

Jesse Felder @jessefelder

'US old-age dependency ratio.' thedailyshot.com/2022/08/12/foo… via @SoberLook

The Craic

Matthew Hooton @MatthewHootonNZ

The @nzlabour MP who told Dr Sharma parliament is a terrible place to “work” really doesn’t get it at all. Government backbenchers aren’t there to “work”. They are there to keep their mouths shut and to vote the way they are told.

Ben Strang @BenJStrang

You can't tell me the Topp twins aren't related to Ian Smith.

1News @1NewsNZ

Dame Lynda Topp's council bid about giving back to supportive community: https://t.co/wQXuxRtZ6j https://t.co/VttxdR7EYr

Andrew Macfarlane @andrewmacfnz

First sign of the end times spotted at Aldi…

Ka kite ano

Bernard