The heart of the current crisis

Brilliant piece in Columbia Journalism Review on the innner workings of subprime crisis and links to fall of Lehmans etc.

"The piece quotes Mike Garner, who was recruited as an executive at Silver State Mortgage, Nevada’s largest mortgage lender, from his previous job—as a bartender. Garner’s new job was to send guys to cruise strip malls to buy up product from brokers like Glen Pizzolorusso, the Boiler Room guy, and sell it to guys like Morgan Stanley’s Francis. Garner says he noticed that every month guidelines got looser, to the point where loan officers refused to look at borrowers’ pay stubs or W-2 forms in order to properly “underwrite” a stated-income loan.
Mike Garner: Then the next one came along, and it was no income, verified assets. So you don’t have to tell the people what you do for a living. You don’t have to tell the people what you do for work. All you have to do is state you have a certain amount of money in your bank account. And then, the next one, is just no income, no asset. You don’t have to state anything. Just have to have a credit score and a pulse.
[reporter] Alex Blumberg: Actually, that pulse thing. Also optional. Like the case in Ohio where twenty-three dead people were approved for mortgages."

http://www.cjr.org/essay/boiler_room.php?page=4

Windfarm decision - tangata whenua values

The Environment Court in NZ has disallowed a large windfarm on the basis of general and Maori landscape values. The farm would have been in an area of landscape which represents a waka or canoe to the local people, Ngati Hineuru. This was stage 2 of a farm, with the first part already being allowed. Nevertheless the decision is significant where landscape and tangata whenua values have overidden the arguments about the urgent need for renewable energy.

Will it be appealed? In part, the decision talks about the need to protect the value the tangata whenua have in the mountain range on which the wind farm was to be placed. An amendment to the RMA to include "cultural landscapes" was specifically rejected several years ago.

The President's plane

Could it be that the President of the United States is the individual who contributes most to greenhouse gas emissions on earth? Consider his 68,000 miles or so of travel last election year. He travels in a 747, producing about 300 persons worth of emissions per flight. My rough calculations (using standard carbon measuring sites) suggest that he produces perhaps 1 million tonnes of CO2 per annum - personally. The equivalent output of a moderately sized thermal power station.

Accordingly, the ultimate symbol of the world's superpower, the President waving from the steps of Airforce One, becomes a statement about the current crisis, and that photo opportunity becomes a media nightmare.

And how powerful it would be to turn that around. Now there's a thought - Air Force One taken out of service to serve the greater good.

US Supreme Court decision on GHGs

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has statutory power to regulate new vehicle emissions as a means of controlling GHG and mitigating man-made climate change. Several interesting points:

• There was uncontested evidence that climate change is already costing states millions of dollars in coastal land erosion, storm events etc. The Court noted that 2004 affidavits about possible damage to New Orleans from man made climate change were spot on in terms of subsequent hurricane Katrina effects.

• The Court said that in the face of the current problems and in particular the risk of much greater harm from man-made climate change, any regulatory steps, no matter how small, needed to be taken (the EPA argued that new vehicle emission regulations wouldnot help much in the bigger scale of things, argued that China's emissions would wipe out any gains etc etc).

Greenhouse gas - causation litigation

The Land and Environment Court of NSW has ruled that GHG emissions have to be taken into account when approvals are given for new coal mines in that State. While the case is particular to its facts and the law in NSW, it nevertheless raises the broad issue of causation. In the future, could non point-source emission activities such as coal mines, airports, even quarries providing materials to cement works be subject to court challenges about GHG emissions?

Could such a case be taken in New Zealand under the RMA?