Search

In Douglas Adams’s classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Wonko the Sane realised that the world had gone mad. He had seen the instructions on the side of a packet of toothpicks. Read more

It isn’t crazy to claim that New Zealand’s school system lacks ambition. Or, if it is, our shop has been crazy for a while. Read more

Hades, God of the Greek underworld, decreed that Sisyphus, for trying to cheat death, must forever push a heavy boulder up a hill. It would roll back down again every time. Read more

A lot of problems have no good solutions – just ones that are bad in different ways. Pricing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture is important, and every way of doing it is going to have problems. This week, the agricultural sector put up its proposed solution. Read more

Tune in to enough climate change events in Wellington, and you’re bound to hear someone claim that nobody living in a city needs an SUV. Leave aside for now that fuel companies must hand in carbon credits through the Emissions Trading Scheme to cover every bit of carbon dioxide coming from tailpipes. Read more

There were a lot of truly classic episodes of Seinfeld, but among the very best, at least for economists, was “The Bottle Deposit”. And we may be in for a repeat if the Ministry for the Environment has anything to say about it. Read more

Yesterday’s budget was not the only budget in town. It followed hot on the heels of Climate Change Minister James Shaw’s announcement on Monday of the Government’s $2.9 billion Emissions Reduction Plan. Read more

There’s an old adage that one should buy stocks not on new news, but on the rumour of it. By the time whatever it is is news, everyone will know it, and the effects will be priced in. Read more