New Zealand already has a ‘dry year’ solution. A whole network of hydro systems that are essentially giant batteries. The LAST thing we need to do is spend millions on more expensive LNG fossil gas. Spend that money on solar and wind to ensure the big hydro batteries never run down, even in a dry year.

$5 billion in carbon credits – the true cost of this Government’s slavish capitulation to farmers, gutting public transport, reneging on Irex Ferries and protecting big polluters One of the things that really does my head in about this Government is how they are told in very clear terms what the negative consequences of their policy will be and then they bloody do it anyway. They were warned by every single organisation working with the homeless that their changes to emergency housing eligibility would result in a. tsunami of homeless, which is exactly what happened. They were told their attacks on the Treaty would generate a backlash from Māori and that is exactly what happened. They were warned that smashing the infrastructure pipeline that Labour had set up would result in vast job losses and a massive number of kiwis fleeing to Australia, which is exactly what is happening. And they were told that dumping the iRex Ferries, cutting public transport, weakening water standards and weakening methane standards would cost us Billions in carbon credits! A lo and fucking behold, $5billion is the price tag for National bending over backwards for the Big Polluters, Farmers and slashing public transport… #nzpol LINK BELOW ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Some NZ farmers and their supporters, appear furious about the idea that they may be helping to subsidise urban buses. They would rather you didn't look at the bill they've been running up. Agriculture produces roughly half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions — more than any other sector in any developed nation. It pays nothing for them. In 2024, the coalition government didn't just maintain that exemption. They legislated it permanently. At a conservative carbon price of $40/tonne, that's an estimated $1.6 billion a year, silently transferred from every other sector of the economy to one. The roads beneath the milk tankers? Roading damage scales with the fourth power of axle load — a 50-tonne tanker doesn't cause fifty times more damage than a car, it causes thousands of times more. Road User Charges don't cover the full cost of local road networks. Ratepayers pick up the tab. When Mycoplasma bovis arrived in 2017, taxpayers covered 62% of the $870 million eradication bill. The disease came in through private cattle movements. - The financial risk fell on the public. The TBfree possum-control programme gets 40% of its funding from the Crown — to protect private livestock assets. Environmental costs: Agriculture leaches 200 million kilograms of nitrate into our waterways annually. Auckland Council is spending $7 billion over ten years upgrading water infrastructure to deal with deteriorating source water quality. The farms that produced the pollution pay nothing toward that bill. We do. Under this govt, farmers have a licence to treat kiwi rivers like open sewers, many, turning our local rivers green brown when flushing their sewage holding tanks... - those of us who live rurally have all seen what this does to local fish stocks and waterways. Those farmers should be dealing with their own waste, preferably putting it back on the land, not shitting in our rivers. They pay nothing for this damage. The New Zealand Ministry of Education actually spends more than $200 million annually on its school transport system, which delivers vital, free daily bus services primarily targeting rural and isolated farming communities Urban kids navigate public bus networks, or they find other means. Adding it up conservatively: $2.0–2.5 billion per year in identifiable public support. Across 50,000 farm enterprises, that's roughly $40,000 per farm, per year. Working for Families — the programme politicians actually debate as welfare — pays around $7,500 per eligible family per year. None of this shows up as "SUBSIDY" in the accounts. It's buried across climate policy, biosecurity, infrastructure investment, education, and tax expenditure — each item looking like something else, none of it assembled into a single line. That fragmentation is not an accident of government accounting. It is a feature of it. The sector is not self-reliant. It is publicly underwritten at a scale that would be politically indefensible if it arrived by cheque. Next time a farmer posts about city buses, or some righteous idiot complains about labours proposed public transport policy, ask: Who, exactly, is subsidising whom? --- *Sources: Stats NZ (2024) · MPI 2025 · OSPRI · schooltransport.org.nz · Rogers et al., Journal of Hydrology (2023) · PHCC 2024 · RNZ/1News April 2026 · Stats NZ Agricultural Census 2022*

Sure farmers don’t catch the subsidised bus, but public transport users don’t get their livestock emissions totally subsidised so go figure

Is the Attenborough Effect turning Kiwis against bottom trawling? thepress.co.nz/politics/3610…

The extremely wealthy should pay their fair share towards society that they benefit so much from. #TaxTheRich

Makes a big difference to some lives

A rare, deep-sea goblin shark has been studied alive in its habitat for the first time, according to new research. Previously, the sharks had only been filmed and reported alive after being hooked on a fishing line and hauled to the surface

If Bernie's 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires had been enacted in 2012, Elon Musk would be worth less than $365 billion instead of the $1.2 trillion that he's worth today. Elon would still be the wealthiest man alive & every family in America would have universal childcare.

I mean, I’m all for putting things into perspective, but when it comes to global warming, zooming out a couple thousand years is not exactly reassuring.

Our 2026 Indicators of Global Climate Change paper is out! We find that the human-induced warming was 1.37C in 2025, and the current rate of warming is 0.27C per decade, on track to firmly pass 1.5C in about four years.

You know all those Elon Musk hospitals, libraries, and school halls? No, there are none.

Why has the cost of living increasing risen so fast? It's called #fossilflation, and you can blame the warmongering Donald Trump and the oil cartels.

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Claude models is not affected. We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible. Read our full statement: anthropic.com/news/fable-myt…

In the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Greenland and Iceland, a large patch of water is doing something very strange. While the rest of the ocean heats up, it's been getting colder. A new study says it has the answer to this mystery — and it's an ominous sign the world is hurtling toward one of the most alarming climate tipping points. cnn.it/4xpS2nQ

Indonesian fishers win another round against US tuna brand Bumble Bee Foods’ attempt to dismiss human trafficking lawsuit  greenpeace.org/usa/indonesia…

This video by Greenpeace is so amazing and so wholesome. youtube.com/watch?v=5ipc3_-E…