Michael Reddell • Jun 21, 2017 •
A month or so ago I ran a couple of posts on New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions in international context. Readers may recall that New Zealand now has the second highest emissions per unit of GDP of any OECD country, having moved up from sixth in 1990. As part of the Paris climate change accord process, New … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jun 15, 2017 •
The New Zealand government finally got around to telling the tobacco companies what the rules will be under plain packaging. Plain packaging won’t be in effect for a while yet, but it takes a while to adjust production lines – it’s good that they finally got the rules out. Fairfax’s Rob Stock called me asking for comment on plain … Read More
Robert Hickson • May 24, 2017 •
NZTech have promoted the creation of a Ministry of the Future in their 2017 Manifesto “New Zealand’s Digital Future“. As a country, we need to wholeheartedly embrace this change, installing a dedicated Ministry of the Future, and Chief Technology Officer, to consider the implications of change across social, economic, educational and all other areas of policy. … Read More
Eric Crampton • Feb 22, 2017 •
The push for more localist approaches to policy problems in New Zealand continues to gather steam. Earlier this month, the McGuinness Institute argued for what they’re calling Demarcation Zones for policy trials. Their formulation differs a bit from what we at the Initiative proposed in 2015, but the core idea is similar: let local communities take on additional … Read More
Robert Hickson • Oct 14, 2016 •
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere these days, especially in opinion pieces and reports to or from governments. It’s almost like you need IBM Watson Analytics to keep up with it all. Here’s a sampling from the last week or so. Venture Capitalist Marc Andreessen notes that it’s a new architecture not just a new feature. Andrew Ng, chief … Read More
John Kerr • Jul 18, 2016 •
The Government funds millions of dollars’ worth of conservation and environment research each year – and it needs your help to make sure that research is heading in the right direction. A planned conservation and environment science ‘roadmap’ will lay out the Government’s research priorities of for the next 20 years. The Department of Conservation (DOC) and Ministry for the Environment (MfE) have jointly … Read More
- Wayne Linklater • Jul 14, 2016 •
The Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Prime Minister thinks New Zealand’s university academics are less engaged in policy-making by government than those in other countries. Source of image: The Guardian Perhaps it was an unplanned, throw-away, line in Sir Peter Gluckman’s wide-ranging presentation for the Science & Society Series at Victoria University today (13 July), but it grabbed … Read More
Peter Griffin • May 06, 2016 •
Sciblogs was born in 2009, a time that could now be considered to have been the tail end of the golden age of blogging in general. Back then, commenting on blog posts was a relatively popular thing, lots of people did it. Then Facebook, Twitter and Reddit came along and much of the commentary shifted to those platforms. All the while, Sciblogs never had … Read More
Marie Brown • Feb 26, 2016 •
New Zealand’s freshwater bodies are as revered as they are imperiled. Despite decades of law devoted to protecting freshwater ecosystems and safeguarding water quality in some way or other, the decline in freshwater biodiversity is startling. Lakes, wetlands, estuaries, streams and rivers are home to a pretty incredible array of wildlife that is in deep trouble. While some effort … Read More
Marie Brown • Oct 23, 2015 •
Environment Aotearoa 2015 confirmed what many of us already knew: our natural heritage is in serious trouble.[i] Despite decades of law, policy and grass-roots conservation initiatives our biodiversity is rapidly declining because of habitat loss, fragmentation and change; pollution; impacts of invasive species; macro scale changes such as ocean acidification and a host of other negative … Read More