We have a logo!

You’ll have noticed our new logo on opening our website. We had a number of excellent submissions for a logo and selected a design by Kit Hindin of New Media Design in Christchurch. You can see more about Kit here: http://newmediadesign.nz/       https://www.facebook.com/newmediadesign.nz/  We thought this design conveyed that we are dealing with an urgent global issue, in which we are pushing out dangerous limits, and which requires decisive action. Thank you Kit! And thanks to others who submitted fine designs.

We hope everyone will enjoy using the logo in your work on Our Climate Declaration. Feel free to copy it on to whatever you are doing to promote this work. 

Cities are where most people in the world live and New Zealand is no exception. But cities are not inevitably carbon-producing hot spots. Urban design can make them sustainable, economical, pleasantly liveable and walkable. The section in Drawdown on Walkable Cities describes four criteria that encourage people to walk (or cycle) rather than drive their cars.

What we do with our food scraps and other waste products has a significant impact on climate change. Why is that? 

Action in Dunedin over the past two months has mostly revolved around making two verbal submissions (with Rosemary Penwarden) to local government authorities. The first was to the Dunedin City Council (DCC) and the second was to the Otago Regional Council (ORC).

It’s hard to believe that “low carbon pathways” actually exist in traffic-congested Auckland where 800 cars are unloaded at the wharves each week and 4000 more houses are urgently needed to accommodate population expansion. But a seminar one recent Saturday afternoon in Auckland’s Central Library provided glimpses of their existence – if you look in the right places.

There has been worldwide agreement for several decades that to encourage wise decisions on energy production and consumption, agricultural intensification, and land use change we need a price on carbon. This would make fossil fuels and the products they contribute to more expensive, renewable energy and energy efficiency relatively cheaper, and incentivise low carbon land uses.  However few jurisdictions have designed really effective systems.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE), Dr. Jan Wright, is about to retire, and is concerned that the New Zealand government has no clear pathway for action on climate change. Her final report is one in which she recommends a structure to make and monitor decisions on NZ’s emissions.

In an extraordinarily happy coincidence, just as the first signatures were gathering on our Declaration and as we were planning our launch, the ultimate textbook for our movement was published – and became a NY Times best seller in its first week. The second printing has now apparently sold out.