Category: Climate Change

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Final 2024 EIT public lecture explores business and climate change | EIT Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti

Source: Eastern Institute of Technology – Tairāwhiti

2 minutes ago

Associate Professor Pii-Tuulia Nikula presented the final public lecture in a series organised by EIT’s Research and Innovation Centre (RIC).

EIT’s final public lecture of the year concluded with a thought-provoking session by Associate Professor Pii-Tuulia Nikula who shared her journey exploring the intricate relationship between climate change and business.

The lecture, titled Turning Up the Heat: Businesses and Climate Change, was the final in the series: ‘Reconnecting Through Research’, at MTG Hawke’s Bay recently, organised by EIT’s Research and Innovation Centre (RIC).

Central to her presentation was the critical question: Are businesses exacerbating the climate crisis, or are they helping to solve it by taking ambitious action?

This question set the stage for a discussion on the dual role businesses play in either contributing to or mitigating climate change.

She examined both the global and local trends shaping this issue, highlighting how some industries and organisations are stepping up to address environmental concerns, while others are still lagging behind.

A key focus of the lecture was the analysis of climate disclosures, science-based decarbonisation targets, and the barriers businesses face in taking action.

Pii-Tuulia discussed the rising importance of climate-related financial disclosures and the need for businesses to adopt measurable climate targets. The lecture also addressed the challenges businesses face, including the financial risks of climate change and the complexity of integrating sustainability into their existing business models.

“Climate change is not just an environmental issue, it’s a business issue,” she said. “To ensure long-term sustainability, companies need to rethink their business models to make sure that they are future-proofed”.

She explored the difference between symbolic and substantive engagement. While some businesses make claims about their commitment to sustainability, Pii-Tuulia pointed out that these symbolic commitments need to be followed by tangible actions that reduce organisational carbon footprints.

She discussed the critical role of businesses in shaping broader climate action, not just within their own operations, but also in their supply chains and external collaborations.

She also stressed that business leaders and policymakers must collaborate closely to create effective solutions and policies that drive real, systemic change.

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Our intentions: How well councils are implementing climate change actions

Source: Controller and Auditor General

Climate changes are impacting on lives and society globally and in New Zealand. These changes impact most areas of public policy and a substantial and increasing amount of public money is being spent to respond to a changing climate.

Climate change means that New Zealand is at risk of experiencing more frequent and intense extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and increased droughts, all of which have significant economic, social, and environmental consequences.

Many public organisations have climate change-related roles and responsibilities. Councils have a significant role in meeting climate change challenges and in understanding, planning for, and responding to the effects of climate change.

What we’re focusing on

Our performance audit will look at how well a selection of councils are responding to climate change. We will look at how they have translated climate change strategies, commitments, and plans into action.

To do this, we will look at how councils identify actions to respond to climate change impacts, how they are implementing those actions, and how they are reporting progress to their communities.

We have selected four councils to look at: Environment Canterbury, Christchurch City Council, Nelson City Council, and Whanganui District Council.

The difference we expect to make

We recognise that all councils are at varying stages of progress in responding to climate change impacts and face a range of issues in doing so. This work will have a particular focus on identifying examples of good practice, including effective collaboration with other public and private organisations, and in examining how lessons have been learned and how challenges have been overcome.

We anticipate that our findings will help other councils to build and maintain momentum in their response to climate change. This work will also support councils to engage more effectively with their communities about their climate change actions.

We expect to complete this work in mid-2024.

Please use the feedback form on the right if you’d like to speak to a staff member about this performance audit, make a suggestion, or ask a question.

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The final cut: crank paper on NZ temperature record gets its rebuttal – warming continues unabated

MIL OSI – Source: Hot Topic – By Gareth Renowden – Analysis published with permission of Hot-Topic.co.nz

Headline: The final cut: crank paper on NZ temperature record gets its rebuttal – warming continues unabated

Way back in the spring of 2014, NZ’s little band of climate cranks somehow managed to get a paper published based on their recalculation of New Zealand’s long term temperature record1. The effort – based on calculations done to support their infamous court case against the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), which they emphatically lost – purported to show that New Zealand’s long term warming rate was only a third of the amount previously calculated. As I pointed out at the time, it was riddled with errors and bad scholarship, but it appeared in the peer-reviewed literature2, and so required a peer-reviewed rebuttal.

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