Click here to see interactive data visualisations and watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website. Climate change is big and it can feel overwhelming. It may seem like New Zealand does not have a big part to play in any solutions to the global problem. Yet despite our low total emissions, our … Read more
Click here to see interactive data visualisations and watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website. Aotearoa’s ecosystems are already under strain from habitat loss and introduced pest species. A warmer climate, more extreme weather and rising sea levels will intensify these stresses. This episode explores which plants and animals are under threat … Read more
Click here to see interactive data visualisations and watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website. Aotearoa is a steep and rugged country. Our settlements are concentrated in pockets of fertile floodplains, around river mouths or along coastlines. During the last few decades, these places have experienced increased river and coastal flooding. As … Read more
Click here to see interactive data visualisations and watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website. The future of rainfall in Aotearoa is complicated. As the country warms up, some places will get drier, while others will become far wetter. These changes will not be spread evenly through the year. … Read more
CLICK HERE to see interactive data visualisations and watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website. Aotearoa is getting warmer. How do we know this, and what will happen over the next 100 years? Watch episode one here: 100 Year Forecast explores what Aotearoa might look like in the next … Read more
Ardern says the government is ready to ‘accelerate’ to meet the ambitious demands of the emissions budget laid down by the Climate Change Commission. Every home and business in the country will need to see a substantial shift in behaviour under far-reaching guidance just released by the Climate Change Commission. The “emissions budget”, the first … Read more
The chair of the Climate Change Commission says he should have understood the challenge of the climate crisis sooner. On Sunday, the country’s first emissions budget will be released and everyone will understand, Justin Giovannetti writes. New Zealand is an international outcast. Its exports are boycotted around the world. Its leaders shunned. That’s a future … Read more
On fire and hope and this time last year. Extracted from Living With the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa, a BWB Text anthology edited by Tom Doig. The city below us looked nothing like Melbourne. Wreathed in thick brown smoke, it resembled some post-apocalyptic ghost town, an End Times vision from a science fiction film. … Read more
All this week we’re looking back on some of the best videos published on The Spinoff in 2020. Today, 100 Year Forecast looks at the future of flooding in New Zealand. Watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website HERE. Aotearoa is a steep and rugged country. Our settlements are … Read more
This short story, The Unremembered, appears in the new collection Scorchers: A Climate Fiction Anthology, alongside stories from celebrated Australian and New Zealand writers such as Tulia Thompson, Renee Liang and Witi Ihimaera. There was this woman named Rona. She was the one pulled up to the moon for swearing. Rona was ordinary – wife, … Read more
Today, our parliament will declare a climate emergency. Three young climate leaders say it’s a grim marker of the scale of human-caused planetary collapse, but we need to ensure the government does not sacrifice the important for the urgent. Historically, emergencies have failed to prioritise equity and fairness when the underlying infrastructure to do so … Read more
We’re the generation who’ve been there and done that and earned the right to what we’ve got, but the flip side to the freedom that comes with being the boss of me is selfishness, writes NZ Herald’s Simon Wilson in this Herald Premium article. At a business conference in the Aotea Centre earlier this month, … Read more
Jillian Sullivan lives in a strawbale house in Central Otago’s Ida Valley. This essay, Between Lands, is from Map for the Heart, a new collection blending memoir and environmentalism. There’s a moment on the ferry crossing, mid-journey, when a bird hovering over the charcoal water turns and flies towards us, wings outspread. This bird, mollymawk, … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The Future We Choose: Surviving The Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres (Bonnier Publishing, $33) Figueres lead the 2015 Paris Accord. She … Read more
During Helen Clark’s second term, Don Brash’s Ōrewa speech saw National surge in the polls and the Labour government’s social policies tighten. Fifteen years years later, could history repeat? When a socially progressive party wins an overwhelming electoral mandate, it’s natural to wonder how long its luck will last. Will Labour really implement strong social … Read more
In a legal first, Ngāi Tahu has lodged a statement of claim in the High Court seeking recognition of its rangatiratanga over its awa and moana, to address the ongoing degradation caused by the environmental mismanagement. Chair of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Lisa Tumahai, explains why it’s long overdue. We all know that something … Read more
Kim Stanley Robinson is a master of science fiction, and specialises in the climate crisis. His latest novel The Ministry for the Future explores a particularly grim metric. A “wet bulb” is exactly what it sounds like: a thermometer wrapped in a wet towel. It’s a measure of both heat and humidity, and it’s also … Read more
Unfortunately, this is an imaginary letter written by nomadic, wild-living Miriam Lancewood to be read at Wellington’s Verb Festival next week. Verb opens on Thursday, October 29 and will run until Sunday, November 8. For the showcase event on Friday night, nine writers were asked to write letters with this prompt: “An envelope with your … Read more
What does it mean to find courage in the face of a global pandemic, race protests, border strife and climate anxiety? Books editor Catherine Woulfe writes: Christchurch’s Word spring festival opens tomorrow. In real life! A highlight will be the Brave Worlds gala on Friday night, at which luminaries (Becky Manawatu, Witi Ihimaera, Elizabeth Knox, … Read more
‘On one scale the coronavirus that plagues us is microscopic. On another we ourselves are made small.’ An essay by Alex Kazemi. Make a Moebius strip. Take a long rectangular piece of paper, loop it, then join the two ends after putting one end through a half twist. The resultant shape is three dimensional but … Read more
Watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website HERE. Climate change is big and it can feel overwhelming. It may seem like New Zealand does not have a big part to play in any solutions to the global problem. Yet despite our low total emissions, our emissions per person are … Read more
Watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website HERE. Aotearoa’s ecosystems are already under strain from habitat loss and introduced pest species. A warmer climate, more extreme weather and rising sea levels will intensify these stresses. This episode explores which plants and animals are under threat and how New Zealand … Read more
Watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website HERE. Aotearoa is a steep and rugged country. Our settlements are concentrated in pockets of fertile floodplains, around river mouths or along coastlines. During the last few decades, these places have experienced increased river and coastal flooding. As sea levels rise and … Read more
Watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website HERE. The future of rainfall in Aotearoa is complicated. As the country warms up, some places will get drier, while others will become far wetter. These changes will not be spread evenly through the year. Some places will have wetter winters and … Read more
Watch all five episodes of 100 Year Forecast on our special interactive website HERE. Aotearoa is getting warmer. How do we know this, and what will happen over the next 100 years? Watch episode one here: 100 Year Forecast explores what Aotearoa might look like in the next 100 years if we don’t take climate … Read more
In recent years, an influx of cheaply made clothes has had a devastating effect not only on our local industry, but the entire planet. Rose Jackson takes a look at the wider impact of fashion’s waste issue, in a piece originally published by Ensemble. It’s hard to know where this story starts. Does it begin … Read more
Watch all five episodes and read the special interactive feature on The Spinoff from Monday. If you’ve seen a climate crisis documentary before, you’ve probably seen plenty of icebergs tumbling into the ocean and factories pumping big plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. The Spinoff’s new documentary series 100 Year Forecast has a bit of … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Hope in Hell: A Decade to Confront the Climate Emergency by Jonathon Porritt (Simon & Schuster, $38) Consider it a … Read more
An extract from Across the Risen Sea, the new climate-fiction novel from junior fiction superstar Bren MacDibble. We’re off the coast of Australia. Survivors of a calamitous sea-level rise live in small island settlements, gardening and fishing and scavenging in wet-to-the-waist skyscrapers. There are sinkholes, storms and massive sharks, and lots of crocs. In this … Read more