August 19, 2025 • 51 mins
New Zealand’s Big Climate Mistake. This interview with Prof Michael Kelly is full of logic and rationale.
A kiwi, Kelly is Professor Emeritus at Cambridge University (coincidentally a place we visited a couple of weeks ago).
The interview with Kelly was 200 or so podcasts ago, in number 93. The information he imparts is as relevant now as then.
We thought at the time it was a stunning listen; if you haven’t heard it, there is much to learn.
Your feedback will be welcomed.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
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It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of the still now the
Leyton Smith podcast powered by news talks it B.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to podcast to two ninety eight for August twenty
twenty twenty five, going beck a few years to December
the second, twenty twenty we interviewed an expat, Kiwi, a
professor emeritus in engineering at Cambridge University. His full qualifications
will follow in a moment. The subject of the interview
was climate mitigation and why New Zealand is making a
(00:51):
big mistake. If you haven't heard this interview before, there
is a great deal to learn in the following of
forty five minutes or so, and you'll likely be astounded
that New Zealand administrators, be they elected or appointed, reject
his offers to them. Oh he did a few years ago,
very briefly. Nobody took much notice, if any, but since
(01:15):
then no not interested. His scientific knowledge outweighs all of
them in my humble opinion, and his opinions are as
relevant today, if not more so than they were in
twenty twenty when we conducted this interview. Now in the
original release of podcast ninety three, I covered off a
(01:35):
few instances of matters that were relevant at the time.
I thought it would be interesting to leave them in
and you can make judgments on well, what's happened from
then until now as you please. But following that, of
course the interview with Professor Michael Kelly. There are essential
(02:06):
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Farmer Broker Auckland Layton Smith, Emeritus Professor of Engineering, University
(03:41):
of Cambridge is the simple and short introduction to Michael Kelly,
but it short changes his achievements. Professor Kelly studied mathematics
and physics to Master of Science level at Victoria University
in Wellington and completed his PhD in Solid state physics
at Cambridge in nineteen seventy four. He is a Fellow
(04:02):
of the Royal Society in London, the Royal Academy of
Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering in New Zealand.
He's a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of
the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and a Senior Member
of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. In the USA,
He's been awarded prizes for his work from the Institute
(04:22):
of Physics, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society.
But the achievement that he had no input into is
that he is in New Zealander. Roversa. I enjoyed the
last conversation we had a fewsback, I think twenty sixteen.
Welcome back, Thank you very much. Now link for me.
Would you the connection between engineering, because most people would
(04:46):
think that engineering has nothing to do with matters climate
and your status as far as climate's concerned.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Well, let me just point out right at the start,
because I've been branded as a climate change to know
and I want to nail that absolute once and for all.
It is the case that climate has always been changing.
The geologist plenty of records that show us that the
climate has changed, and it's changed in my life and
listening to my parents and grandparents have changed during their life.
(05:17):
So there's no question this climate is changing. The question
that remains is whether the mainkind's contribution, and there is
definitely a mankind contribution, is inevitably or even most likely
going to lead to major catastrophe in our lifetime. Now,
I contrast with the fact that it might cause catastrophe
in two hundred years. But if you can imagine people
(05:40):
standing on the banks of Wellington Harbor in eighteen hundred saying,
perhaps we oughtn't come here because in the next two
hundred years there'll be some major earthquakes. So I want
to be clear about the fact that where the engineering
comes into it is that everybody who's concerned about climate
change wants to stop it. And I'll come on later
(06:02):
to the fact that we don't do enough of talking
about adapting to it. But when you come to stop
it with phrases like a net zero carbon emission's economy
for the world in twenty fifty, this is a phrase
which slips off the tongue and warms the heart of
individuals sitting around contemplating the future. But when it is
(06:24):
then cascaded down into a set of finite, complex and
very large engineering projects that would actually deliver as a
result of those programs and projects being completed, would deliver
the net zero target. Then you start to see some
serious problems and you have to ask a lot of
(06:47):
serious questions about value for money, opportunity costs, and a
whole series of other things. So the basic engineering is
when we decide we're going to do something about it,
what are we going to do? And that's where the
engineering comes in.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Very good. You mentioned twenty fifty. The New Zealand government
appears to want to move it, plans to move it
to twenty. Now the suggestion has been made to me
that they are totally demented, and that was made by
a man of some qualification. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well, I'm not sure about it. I'd use the word tomentum,
but I think grossly mistaken would be still an accurate description.
And I'll tell you why. If you think of the
last ten years in Auckland, you've been talking about trying
to build a light railway from the center of town
to the airport, what you'd have to do for net
(07:42):
zero twenty thirty. There's a project which is about one
hundred times more complicated and bigger than the light railway.
I haven't done the exact calculations, but that's the kind
of problem, and nobody has actually given any thought to
who's going to pay, who's going to do the work,
et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I think that those are irrelevant questions as far as
the administration goes.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Well, that's suidly true that in that case I would
have to claim that they're insincere. I mean, if we
really you know, the Second World War, people said we
are going to fight the invasion from We're going to
stop an invasion from Germany and stop it all, and
they meant it. Now, if they say we're going to
have a twenty to fifty target or thirty tiger, and
(08:30):
in their heart of hearts they don't really mean it, well,
then that's a new phase of public discourse for which
not enough people are ready. I want to just give
you one example. Just I've got one hundred, but here's
just one. All your houses have a sixty amp fuse
in them, so that is when the mains come in,
the first thing they see is a sixty amp fuse. Now,
(08:53):
if we can have an all electric Britain PSIA, because
I've spent a lot of time working in the UK,
all electric New Zealand, we're going to have to electrify
both heat and transport. And so we think of our
house having a fast charger and electric shower. Well, an
electric chower draws forty apps, and remember the main fuse
(09:14):
bock is sixty apps and a fast charger draws thirty
three amps, a more moderate one seven to ten apps.
It's very quickly the case that you will not be.
In fact, a study that's done in the United Kingdom
says that a modern house, a larger shouse, will have
something like a two hundred amp load on it when
(09:36):
many things are going. And so the whole idea that
we're going to get to a net zero target of
twenty thirty and living something like what we're going to do,
it's just going to be impossible in terms of electrifying
heat and transport because nobody has talked about rewiring the
whole of the distribution services. Because not only will you
(10:00):
have to rewire the house, but from the house to
the substation. The substation will be too small, and the
transform will have to be upgrade, and of course you'll
need a grid which is two or three times bigger
than we have at the moment. And if you think
we're going to double the amount of electricity we're going
to have in ten years time. I think you're dreaming.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Let's move the date back to I think what written
is still aiming for, and that is twenty fifty. Does
the same rational apply.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yes, it's actually even worse there. For example, in the
United Kingdom we use far more heat heating houses than
we do heating houses in New Zealand. And the scale
of the problem, what's even worse than the UK is
that the largest dam that could be used for energy
storage has enough energy if you fill the dam and
(10:51):
whales dinner Wig and whales. If you fill it, fill
it and then empty it by charging cars, you can
chargeer point six percent of all small cars in England.
I'm not talking about large range rovers or trucks or vans,
so you know that's one in about one hundred and
fifty cars can be charged. So the scale of the
(11:11):
infrastructure needed to be built to be able to run
even a quarter of the car fleet. Now, of course,
if the people concerned, I've got a more dramatic and
draconian future for us, namely that we're going to live
much more modestly and we will move only one tenth
amount of distance in a year than we do at
(11:32):
the moment, and we need only vegetables from local regions
and that which can be stored from one season to
the next, then that's a different future. We could actually
live a very very modest lifestyle. That is, of course
what has lived in many poorer parts of the world today.
But I don't think that that's part of the deal
(11:54):
that we're being offered.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, there's a quote that I've stole from a comedy
show once, many many decades ago, in fact, and I've
used it ever since, but I haven't brought it out
in a while. So let me exercise it and suggest
that there appears to be certainly a strong push from
a sizeable quarter. They have us all living in caves
(12:18):
and scrubbing ourselves in the creek with a rock, would you.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Well, the point is that's not an offer at the moment.
I mean, that's not in the public discourse. I haven't
heard anybody or referred to anybody in Parliament to get
up and say that. So I'm just assuming that people
are being honest with us and that they want to
get that when they say they want a zero target
(12:42):
to be met by twenty fifty that they're honest about it,
and that they will will the means. Of course, I
don't know. I haven't calculated yet how many engineers will
be needed.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
But I've just done.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Some sums for the first three big projects, which is
to electrify heat, to electrify ground transportation, and to provide
the extra electricity needed for the UK, and I quickly
come to a sum. And I haven't done all the
sums yet, but I'm up to nearly one hundred thousand
dollars per person between now and twenty thirty. Now. One
(13:16):
person to me said the other day that three thousand
dollars per person a year, it's not a lot if
you put it along with other things that we spend
money on, and that may indeed be the case. But
what I would want to do is to have the willpower.
I mean, it's just not resources. I mean, you couldn't give,
for example, all this money to accountants or lawyers and
say build me a new power station or build me
(13:39):
a new set of lines, so that do we have
enough engineers? And of course it's no point trying to
bring in excess engineers from everybody everywhere else in the world,
because everybody else in the world is going to be
facing the same problem. I have a graph which shows
the way that carbon emissions have been exoribly grown since
eighteen eighty and we have to turn them off about
(14:01):
six times as fast in the next thirty years as
we accreted them. And even in the last twenty years
since we've been talking about doing this, the carbon emissions
in the world have inexorably been going up. The point
at stake is that there is one third of the
world's population well more than that, about three billion people
in Africa, South Asia and India, and some extent but
(14:25):
not less so now China, who are still working hard
to aspire towards something that I would describe as a
European style of living. I don't mean a luxurious style
as you get for some people in the United States,
but something where people can afford to have their own
personal means of transport and go on regular holidays and
(14:46):
eat food from around the world at the time of
their choosing. That is an ambition which can be met
provided there is a lot more energy per person available
to these people in the world. The trends over the
last twenty years are set to continue for at least
the next twenty five years, as the world population gradually
(15:07):
comes out of grinding poverty towards a middle class existence.
And just as we used had a forty percent increase
in fossil fuel use between nineteen ninety five and twenty fifteen,
were on scale for another forty percent increase between twenty
fifteen and twenty thirty five, and the absence of the
(15:31):
middle class, at the absence of the poor will take
till nearer twenty fifty to achieve. So while there's this
large increase in stent of living be aspired to by
many people, the carbon emissions are going to go up.
And you know, thirty million, thirty three billion people the
last time I calculated, which was about five hundred times
(15:55):
the population of New Zealand. So we have five hundred
times as many people going the other way in terms
of their use of energy and carbon emissions than we're going.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Let me get back to the administration of of New Zealand,
but not just New Zealand, the various administrations around the world.
You in a presentation that you made last year, energy
utopia is an engineering reality. You quoted three US presidents,
Yes nineteen sixty one, Dwight Eisenhower said he was the
(16:27):
first in holding scientific research and discovery in respect as
we should. We must also be alert to the equal
and opposite danger that public policy could become the captive
of a scientific technological elite. Have we reached that put yet?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I think in this particular case we have because at
the moment we've got that Parliament in the United Kingdom
and now in New Zealand delegating responsibility to come up
with the ideas for this to a Climate Change Committee,
which in the United Kingdom I know has one materials
(17:07):
engineer on it, no civil engineers or anybody who's got
any personal experience in scoping multi billion pound projects. So
these people can sit there and say it would be
nice to have this, so let's recommend it without any
of the background study, particularly the critical study of the
(17:28):
resources needed, the costs involved, how the finances will be provided,
et cetera, et cetera. And I think it's much the
same in this country. In fact, I've got a line
out to the Climate Change Committee here to make sure
that everything they say that requires engineering is grounded in engineering. Reality.
(17:52):
Engineering isn't everything. And I want to be very clear
about that we can all choose by our own selves
to live a more modest lifestyle, that is, to travel less,
to turn the heating down, to resume what we used
to do when I was a child and Tarnakin and
that's where a pullover inside most of the time for
half of the year when it was cold enough to
(18:13):
warrant it. But that of course has now been largely
abandoned because of central heating and other forms of energy
use in side houses.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
A little later in that presentation, you said much of
what is proposed by way of climate change mitigation is
simply pie in the sky. If it's pie in the sky,
does it mean we're wasting our time in the first place,
or that the governments the government is no.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Think The thing I would say is the following that
we've been talking about all this but no action at scale.
So just over ten years ago, when I was a
scientific advisor, the Climate Change Act in the United Kingdom
being signed in and I pointed out to all the
people in the department that I worked in, which was responsible,
among other things for communities, but also the buildings they
(19:00):
lived in and the condition of the building. I pointed
out that forty five percent of all the emissions used
in the United Kingdom come from heating, air and water
and buildings, and one of the things we're going to
have to do is do a massive retrofit of all
the buildings to make them more energy efficient. In those days,
it was in order to reach an eighty percent reduction
of carbon emissions, let alone one hundred percent in terms
(19:23):
of one hundred percent net as in the net zero.
And we discussed it all and at that time my
advice and a minister set aside seventeen million pounds so
that over one hundred buildings, smaller homes in the social
housing sector were retrofitted, just to see what would be required. Now,
(19:44):
these were all one off projects. I mean, if you
were going to do a national retrofit program, you'd have
a whole supply chain, you'd have the Yellow Pages equivalent
of the whole industry providing everything. But these projects in
the United Kingdom there were about fortieth in which spent
an average of forty five thousand pounds sorry ninety five,
(20:05):
let me get it right, ninety five thousand pounds aiming
to get and eighty percent reduction in carbon emissions, but
only got on average sixty percent. Three out of forty
five got up to eighty percent. Three out of the
forty five didn't even get to thirty percent. So when
you take those numbers and you scale them up not
for an eighty percent reduction, but one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You get to think it very quickly.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Of two trillion pounds, now you don't have to spend
all of that two trillium, provided you can decarbonize a
lot of the energy somewhere else. Now in this country,
in New Zealand, you have a lot of hydropower, which
is a great benefit that equipment of that comes from
coal and natural gas and nuclear power in Britain. Of course,
nuclear power for most of the civilized world is probably
(20:47):
the way forward because it's the only low carbon emission
form of energy that is available on demand, as opposed
to when the wind's blowing or sun is shining. So
coming back to the issue of retrofitting houses, this would
have been a program which if we'd started ten years ago,
we're just spend five hundred pounds already doing the whole project,
(21:11):
and we've probably spent less than one billion. And so
the issue is that people talk about things but don't
do it, and there's no incentives and when you look
at the payback in terms of saved energy bills at
seventy five years typically, So why would anybody invest their
own money in order to get something which will only
(21:34):
pay off on the time of their grandchildren. Now at
the moment, the only way to actually achieve that in
England will be a direct government fee.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It let me go back to I was going to
mention point two a few moments ago, and I don't
want to let it go because it's important and I'm
tempted to say, as you see it or read it,
does it tell you that we need to do something
on this planet?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Well?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I think so, but not so Let's think not only
about climate change. There's a lot of other things that
are getting it attraction now, and that's the use of
precious resources. And then what we do at end of life.
You know the amount of waste plastic that's ending up
in the oceans, you know, as it can used to
walk them down the beach in New Plymouth, and I'd
be really happy if I found a bit of fishing
(22:23):
line that had been washed up, because that was another
real I didn't have to buy. But when you go down, down,
and see so much jump there, which is going to
take a long time. There is a case to be
made for living more at ease with the planet. I'm
in the last long and last analysis. I'm actually optimistic
because the world population has been changing since nineteen seventy
(22:46):
and everywhere in the world where there's universal primary education
and more people living in towns and in cities, the
indigenous absolute population is in decline. And just over one
hundred years time the population is going to be seven
billion again, but it's going to be going down from
nine billion at the rate of which has been going
up now. And so I always say, somewhat tongue in
(23:08):
cheek that if there is going to be sea level
rise on I mean, it's quite clear the sea level
is going to rise, has been rising steadily for one
hundred and fifty years, and mankind has probably made a
bit of a contribution, but not a lot. Now, if
that sea level rise continues, there are going to be
billions of empty houses available on higher ground from decreased population.
(23:32):
The population of Italy is predicted, on the present scale
of the fertility of native Italian women, to shrink from
something like its present population to not much more the
population of Rome by twenty one hundred, so it's only
the certain parts of the world where the population is
still increasing. But even there, in places like Bangladesh and Lesotho,
(23:54):
the two places I did a study of the actual
birth rate per family has already dropped from five where
it used to be twenty or thirty years ago, to
two and a half. And the figure you need is
two point one. If the average family, the number of
children per fecund woman drops below two point one in
(24:14):
the population in the population will decline, and it's heading
in almost all parts of the world, not quickly enough
in some cases, but it's already with cass and Europe, Austrodasia, Japan,
and the United States that the population isn't decline in
Europe and Europe.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Back to back to Italy, my materially my favorite country
in the world, my favorite culture. With the with the
population shrinking to the size of Rome, basically that leaves
a lot of spare space, which means that there has
to be massive immigration into into Italy, more so more
so than now wanted or unwanted, legal or otherwise, simply
(24:58):
because the space is there and it will be filled.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yes, well, there's a slightly different cut. I mean, the
thing about immigration already now in Germany was that Missus
Merkel was vilified for opening the doors to one million
people now, but when you actually look at whether I'm
all employed, they are doing the jobs a lot of
Germans don't want to do. If you look at the
old people's homes and who's staffing them and who start,
(25:22):
the amount of people in hospitals and various other kinds
of caring communities, the immigrant population is overrepresented. So it
is one of those things that is a two edged sword.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I'm still I'm still not quite satisfied with where we
left your view of what of whether we need to
do anything or not. I'm certainly not going to debate
with you, argue with you over the line that you took.
But does the science tell you that we need to
do something about CO two?
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Well, personally, I don't. It's not a compelling story. Let's
put it this way. There are people who feel that
just I mean, the sort of thing that's been going
on for years, and it was started fifty year years ago,
that we're going to run out of food, and yet
the smartness of mankind, you know, just as I was
saying that was happening. Norman Balloug, the Norwegian scientists working
(26:19):
in the States, prompted a green revolution, and there's far
less hunger as a fraction of the world's population now
than there's ever been. And this year we're headed for
a record grain harvest. So when everybody tells me that
it's all going to go to custard, I want them
to tell me now the year in which the crossover
is going to happen. That is that the destruction because
(26:39):
of climate change is going to exceed the gain and productivity.
It is the case in terms of cereals. I think
that the largest land area ever used was about twenty
years ago and that ever since. Now I could have
be careful this one. It's either that or it's agriculture.
So animals, but one of the farm sizes. Global farm
(27:03):
size are coming down because we're just more efficient in
the way we use each piece of land.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
You said, you said that it was grain that is
the one area that needs the land.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
That's right, Yes, still yes. I mean the point is
that in the case of I can predict, for example,
on the forty year timescale, which after all, is that
it is the time. I've been nearly come over for
year since I've been away. But when I left New
Zealand nineteen seventy one, everybody swore that wool would see
off any form of synthetic fiber as a material for
(27:37):
keeping warm outside. Well, we know that hasn't happened, But
I think within forty years we could have all major
cities being self reliant, self sufficient on their food from
within their own boundaries. There are now a number of
excuse me, vertical farms being developed which have a productivity
of seventy times per unit area than outside. And so
(28:02):
it mightn't be everybody's cup of tea to eat that
sort of thing. But if it's a difference between not
eating and eating food from from a food farm inside
the boundaries, people will eat it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Give me your thought, then, on the political approach of
corraling people into cities and stopping the spread to even
the suburbs, but certainly beyond, in other words, tight city
boundaries and regulations that limit limit expansion.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Well, I'm all for freedom, make surely rather than putting
too many limits on I'm glad.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
I'm so glad you said that.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well, the other side of it is that we will
do this voluntarily. I mean, people didn't pile into London unwillingly,
and many of them choose right now, a lot of
there's a lot of New Zealand people living in London.
Why are they there because of the excitement and the
buzz that is provided by a city, which is to
be contrasted with the tranquility and stillness and ined sometimes
(29:02):
loneliness out on the countryside. So it's not a matter
of having to legislate for it. It's the way it
maybe like legislating to tell people stay out of Auckland,
you know that would that would even if they tried
it, it probably wouldn't work.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Well, they are moving very rapidly to banning cars.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Well, now, well that's an interesting one because I was
I actually drove fifty kilometers today and I thought, well,
suppose I hadn't been allowed to, or suppose I had
had to wait and get a piece of public transport.
And the problem with public transport is it really does
work in cities like London and Tokyo and that where
(29:44):
it's very high density. But if you want to cycle
from the airport to the center of town, which will
be it's quite a distance and not everybody would be
fit enough to do it, so you need dense forms
of transport. And even if you take the high speed
the link between the city center and the airport, there's
(30:07):
only a small fraction of Auckland citizens who actually live
within walking the little alone cycle distance with that particular feature.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Indeed, talking of the Climate Change Committee in Great Britain,
some of the measures you wrote, some of the measures
introduced by the committee have actually made global emissions worse.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Oh yes, there are a number of examples of that.
The critical one in the UK is that the price
of electricity has an upward wedge on it, and that
wedge of prices to pay for windmills and so on
and so forth. So what it's prompted and almost immediately,
was that the aluminium industry closed down and we now
import our aluminium from China. When the aluminium was made
(30:53):
in the UK, it was made partly with nuclear electricity,
partly with gas and partly with coal. But where we
now import all our eleminum from China, where it's made
exclusively from coal. So while our missions have gone down,
our emissions by consumption have actually gone up. As far
(31:15):
as that is concerned, and it's only the extent to
which we're going to be more and more efficient, and
we are being more and more efficient at using materials
that we can bring that down again. But the immediate
effect over the ten years was to raise the emissions
from al aminum sourcing the aluminum used in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
The World Economic Forum, can I ask your opinion, Well.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
It's what I call a talking shop with four groups
of people. Their are industrialists, academics, political leaders and celebrities.
And as a talking shop, I mean there is an
equivalent talking shop for scientists and technologists. Actually it's run
in Japan and Kyoto every two years that it doesn't
have any celebrities, and there is a serious attempt there
(32:04):
to try and look at the main issues that have
looked at science and technology for in Japan are at
looking after the world's poorer and making sure they get
effective and efficient access to things that the people in
the world that developed world take for granted. But it's
room for a lot of networking and quontificating.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well they're working. I mean, there is a lot of
publicity being given now an increasing amounts and it'll get
bigger as the next meeting in January gets closer. That
is to do with the great reset, as it's known. Yes,
and they seem to be pulling a lot of support
from journalism and from academia for exactly that.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Well, look, that's the standard way to change people's minds,
and good luck to them. But I think the real
issue is when the proverbial hits the fan or the
rubber hits the road. That's where a lot of these
people whose job is to talk have to stand back
and give way to people who actually do. And that's engineers.
(33:11):
And engineers learned a lesson years ago in Biblical times
from building the Tower of Babel. They didn't know at
the time when they're asked to build the tower. They
didn't know where Heaven was and i in which direction
to build it, or how much it was going to
cost when they started out, and it ended in chaos.
I've got a fairly confident prediction that when we start
(33:36):
to do very big things and then find out part
way through that it's all not going to work. Saying
for fifteen years time, we're going to be nowhere near it.
Well past twenty thirty, people are going to be asking
serious questions how do we get to this mess And
the problem is there's nobody being given a voice to
actually say but hang on a minute, Hang on a minute. So,
(33:58):
for example, if we were to convert the whole of
the UK car fleet tomorrow to a vehicle fleet tomorrow
to electric cars, we would need a significt confraction of
the amount of copper use in the world, nearly half
of all the lithium and more of disposium, neodonium, some
of the other rare earth metals they are sourced today
(34:21):
in the world, just to provide the UK with electric
cars and the energy infrastructure to allow them to operate. Now,
when you think that the UK itself is less than
one percent of the population of the world, you then
suddenly find that we've got to treble that sort of
thing to actually get a stop. Now, eventually you're setting
(34:43):
into a mode of recycling, you won't need so much.
But the step jump to make the transition is of
a size that people haven't given adequate thought about.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
In your initial conclusions from that presentation, there were three
three man energy equals quality of life, and we intervene
there only with the most convincing of cases. Correct, has
that changed?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
No true yes. I mean the point is at the moment,
everybody in Europe today uses about ten times as much
energy per person as somebody two hundred years ago. It's
really interesting to see where that energy goes. They use
about three times as much energy today just on the
(35:27):
manufacture and the distribution of stuff. That's all stuff that
gone by. If you think of a house in eighteen hundred,
it had a few utensils and a few family treasures
and a little bit of furniture. If you contrast that
with home to that's full of stuff. Well, we use
three times as much energy per person per day to
(35:47):
generate and purchase that stuff. We also use the same
amount total amount of energy per person today that somebody
used in Europe two hundred years ago, just on our
private motory. And there are things like this to god,
so we use about seven times as much. So and
if you look at the trend in particular presentation in
(36:10):
your phone to, I think it's one of the earlier
figures shows the way in which the population has increased
and by about sevenfolds since eighteen hundred, that the energy
use has increased about forty twofold or forty fivefold. Second
and GDP have gone up several hundred fold.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Your second point was initial conclusions renewables do not come
close to constituting a solution to the climate change problem
for the industrialized world. My only question is is New
Zealand in that category.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
No, it's an outline to along with Along with Norway,
these are two countries with low density population, lots of mountains. Now,
of course, if we were to electrify the grid in
order to provide for electric cards and particular electric trucks,
we would have to double more than double, in fact
treble the size of the grid. Now the question is
(37:04):
where is all that extra electricity coming from. Well, very
little of it will come from hydro, because there is
enough pushback against any form of new hydro. But the
idea of doubling our capacity is just not conceivable. The
question about wind, well, I'm waiting to see the lifetime
of some of the winds, some of the ones, some
(37:26):
of the wind turbines offshore in England because of the
ice associated with winter storms starting to free the laminations
on the blades, so it's not clear they will last
as long as they thought they would. So there's a
whole series of things which make me think that we're
going to fall far short, particularly the demand, the demand
(37:47):
for land area to We need civil to something like
the whole size of Auckland and solar panels covered literally
to provide the solar contribution to this all electrified.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I struggle to see it ever happening.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Well, that's that's my point. You can write it in principle. Well,
I've been trying, but have failed so far to actually
show that the transition actually violates the laws of thermodynamics.
If I could do that, I'd be in a much
more powerful position. But it's a bit like the Second
World War, where people said, look, it doesn't matter how
much it costs, we're going to build whatever it takes.
We're going to do whatever it takes because we have
(38:27):
to beat an enemy. So far, at the moment, there
is no way that climate change is portrayed. Well, they're
trying to portray it as an existential enemy, but you
see now you find that they've gone too far. So
I've got colleagues who are pulling back, so that when
the Norwegian scientists last week said, look, it's a real
(38:48):
existential threat. You know, some of our kids are going
to die in their lifetime from climate change, and then
the more greening of the parents staying their kids, we
don't really need to study at school because you're going
to die before you grow up. I mean, this sort
of thing is now being wound back as being grossly excessive.
It was interesting that even of the initial wife of
(39:11):
Stephen Hawking was convinced when she married that they weren't
going to live for very long because Europe was going
to go up in a nuclear bomb. In the late
sixties early seventies.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
It was a.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Prevailing view among many people at that time. But it
just hasn't happened indeed. So now let me just say
there's another whole point that I haven't even got on here,
which I think is even more important that we have
to study. Let's suppose, for example, that the sea level
does inexorably continue to arise, and by that I mean
(39:44):
people that are within a meter of the sea level
even behind will need to have walls built along the shore,
you know, from all around Wellington Harbor or wrong all
our main cities and near the sea. It would not
take long. It would be a significant engineering project, but
no bigger than say a motorway project to build a
(40:05):
wall that will protect all of our major as sets
from one meter of sea level rise? Now, who is
doing the scoping of that? Who was investing in that?
And so everybody is spending their time on trying to
mitigate climate change, I think we should be doing a
lot of preparation for adapting to it. So the example
(40:28):
I always gives is the Thames Barrier in London. There's
a big storm that flooded lots of England in nineteen
fifty three, and people said, look, the next time we
have one alike of those, that's going to really do
for the central London. So the people started doing the
actual aerial calculations and by the mid eighties came to
the inclusion if they built the Thames Barrier now, the chances
(40:49):
are that in its design lifetime it will pay back
its cost more than payback its cost and savings from
insurance claims against flooding in London. And that's indeed what's happened.
Now they're even doing the actual calculations to say when
will they put another meter on that barrier. Now, I
think there should be for every pound that's being put
(41:10):
into climate change mitigation, we should be setting aside a
pound or a dollar in this case for climate change adaptation,
and particularly when as I come back to what I
said at the start that five hundred times as many
people in the world are going directly in the opposite
direction as we are about their personal consumption, which is
all continuous as it ever has been to be eighty
(41:32):
five percent provided by fossil fuel.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
As briefly as you like the last point in your conclusions,
China is not the beacon of hope it is portrayed
to be.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
What do you mean, Well, I think when I looked
at people say they're doing wonderful things. But they are
doing wonderful things. They're spending more on all of these
things together, but it's still making a very small impact.
You know, the Chinese are still building coal fire power stations,
and quite a lot of them now. The secret about China, though,
(42:03):
is that its population is going to stop increasing in
about ten years from now, and by twenty sixty already
the population of China will be less than it was
in the year two thousand and this almost no revolution
in fertility and democratics will make any difference to that statement.
(42:25):
So is the problem over the next few years is
going to be Africa, India and South Asia.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Sitting on my desk in front of in front of me.
Up to the side is a book by Clive Hamilton,
The Silent Invasion, China's Influence in Australia. He's on my
list sometime soon. I wanted to extract from you what
your thoughts were on that. Let me say that it's
been a pleasure talking with you. I would have loved longer.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
God, thanks very much. All I'm wanting is for there
to be a debate about this, so that everybody goes
into what they're doing with their eyes open for the
upsides and the downsides. And at the moment I'm afraid
there's very little reluctance to have this debate. I mean,
I actually wrote a serious paper about the cost of
(43:15):
electrifying the British economy and the consequences are directly in
contradiction to several of the studies put out by the
Climate Change Committee, and I think some of their comments
have got engineering flaws in them. And I asked to
please to be able to engage with them on this
(43:37):
very serious matter. But the replier got from the Secretary's
Chief executive is thank you very much. For your critique,
but we choose not to engage with you full stop.
So I think that just says it all. I mean,
if I was done Tom Dick or Harry with some
fancy isolated be in my bonnet, that's one thing. But
(43:59):
what I've got is a serious takedown of some of
their issues, and I'd like to find out. I mean,
if I'm wrong, I'm being made it very clear that
I'll make a public retraction and go away.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
But so far.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
I'm not wrong, and.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I don't believe you are. It's been a great pleasure.
Thank you, good bye, Michael.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Out of the op ed in The Australian on Monday
the thirtieth of November, written by our friend Nick Kato.
He anchors it around the rud Royal Commission in Australia
into diversity in the media. He's upset. He and Malcolm
Turnbull are both upset. They're always upset, but on this
occasion they're upset about the about the Murdoch Press and
(45:01):
the number of newspapers that Murdock owns. As I think
Nick Kato says somewhere here, what they're really upset about
is the number of people who are buying the Murdoch
papers anyway, it's headed Media and diversity alive, but not
at all well in New Zealand, and I pick it
up where it matters to us. The media paradise that
Rudd craves looks somewhat like New Zealand, where inoffensive newspapers
(45:24):
compete for drabness and commentators are all but united in
adoration of Jasindra Adern. You'll struggle to read a word
of dissent in the four daily newspapers. Mike Hosking and
some of his fellow presenters are prepared to break from
the pack at Newstalk ZEDB, but that's it. Retired Zenby
host Layton Smith remains in the fray as a podcaster
and colomnist. But when it comes to broadcast media, Hosking
(45:47):
is Alan Jones, Chris Kenny, Andrew Bolt, Peter Credlin and
Paul Murray rolled into one. I suggest there's a bit
too much collagen injected into that, but nevertheless he's close.
The only hint of irritation at the Prime Minister's weekly
press conference is that she isn't running fast enough with
her agenda of transformational change. The umbrellatur for the writing
(46:09):
of social injustices, including those yet to be invented. Adern's
decision to hold a referendum on the legalization of cannabis
was widely praised as another step on the path to sainthood.
The proposal was rejected by fifty one point six percent
of voters, prompting this exchange Media. In terms of governing
for all New Zealanders, you do have forty eight point
(46:31):
four percent of New Zealanders who did vote for legalized cannabis,
the PM and the majority who didn't, So we have
to be mindful of that too. Media, you have promised
to govern for all those of New Zealanders, including the
forty eight point four percent who did. There's an appetite
among an enormous section of the population for something, and
(46:51):
obviously the referendum did fail, But it doesn't mean can
we assume that because forty eight point nine percent of
Americans didn't vote for Joe Biden that Donald Trump can
stay in the White House? Or does the ballot only
count when the left is winning. Those with the more
sophisticated understanding of life liberal democracy than media in brackets
(47:11):
the generic name ascribed to journalists in the transcript. Presumably
because they are all of one mind, those brackets may
be feeling a little queasy. A prime minister who tells
voters she chose politics because it was the profession that
would make me feel I was making a difference, and
holds an absolute majority in the Parliament's only chamber is
(47:33):
an accident waiting to happen. An independent media should be
the first responders in such circumstances, ready to erect barriers
in the path of the Prime Minister should she swerve
across the line. Yet the press pack is not merely
on the bus. They're telling her how to drive it.
New Zealand's small population and splendid isolation a part of
the explanation for the enfeeblement of its media. A derned
(47:56):
sledgehammer response to the COVID nineteen pandemic hastened the decline.
In May nine, Entertainment let go of newspapers it inherited
from Fairfax, the Dominion Post, the Press and the Sunday
Star Times for one dollar to a company that goes
by the name of Stuff. It seems like a bargain.
(48:16):
Given the copy of the Post the newsstand will set
you back two dollars ninety, hardly a vote for confidence
in the future of the media. Yet market size is
only part of the explanation. It doesn't explain why, for example,
a country split politically down the middle, one hundred percent
of daily newspapers and virtually every TV and radio station
stands proudly with a DERN. We can only conclude that
(48:39):
commercial logic no longer applies. Media companies are no longer
driven by the pursuit of unserved segments of the market.
It's not the product that is faulty, but the customer.
When commercially minded proprietors leave the building, the journalists take charge.
They are university educated professionals cut from the same narcissistic
(48:59):
cloth as a Dern. They too want to feel like
they're making a difference. When the collapse of New Zealand's
fourth estate, it's difficult to see what might stop a
journalism becoming the country's official religion. The National Party is
in no position to offer effective political opposition. The party
that reinvented credible government in New Zealand is bruised from
two defeats, uncertain who should lead or in what direction
(49:23):
it should lead. Intellectual opposition is all but extinguished in
the universities, but still flickers on in alternative media, blogs,
websites and YouTube channels, which serve as a faint beacon
of dissent. And he concludes by going back to the
situation across the Tasman. Is this what Rudd seeks the
(49:44):
last thing a country needs as a prime minister? Basking
and applause. Who switches on the news and finds herself
staring at the mirror. Well it was pretty damning, you
might say. Whether you think he's one hundred percent correct
or not is entirely up to your interpretation of things.
But I know this already beat a lot of support, So.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
There you have it.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Professor Michael Kelly be very interested in your comments one
way or the other, but I imagine that most people
will be supporters of Michael Kelly by this stage anyway.
Latent at newstalksib dot co dot z or Carolyn wi
a Y at NEWSTALKSIDB dot co dot Nz. Podcast two
ninety eight was originally going to be with Christian in London,
(50:45):
but a couple of things got in the way, so
he will be here next week. I know there's plenty
of people who are very keen to hear what he's
got to say this time round. In fact, Christian, come
here please. What what do you mean by what? It's
true that you were going to be on this week,
but things got in the way. As I just said,
so will you be available for next week? For podcasts
(51:09):
to ninety nine, I will be depending on the Greek
medical system.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
That's a hint.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Just wait, there's a story to come, believe me. So
next week we'll be with Christian Smith, and then for
three hundred. I really don't know who's going to be
the guest for that big occasion because there are so
many possibilities. However, we'll be back next week. Until then,
(51:38):
as always, thank you for listening and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Thank you for more from News Talks at b Listen
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You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
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Leyton Smith podcast powered by news talks it B.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to podcast to two ninety eight for August twenty
twenty twenty five, going beck a few years to December
the second, twenty twenty we interviewed an expat, Kiwi, a
professor emeritus in engineering at Cambridge University. His full qualifications
will follow in a moment. The subject of the interview
was climate mitigation and why New Zealand is making a
(00:51):
big mistake. If you haven't heard this interview before, there
is a great deal to learn in the following of
forty five minutes or so, and you'll likely be astounded
that New Zealand administrators, be they elected or appointed, reject
his offers to them. Oh he did a few years ago,
very briefly. Nobody took much notice, if any, but since
(01:15):
then no not interested. His scientific knowledge outweighs all of
them in my humble opinion, and his opinions are as
relevant today, if not more so than they were in
twenty twenty when we conducted this interview. Now in the
original release of podcast ninety three, I covered off a
(01:35):
few instances of matters that were relevant at the time.
I thought it would be interesting to leave them in
and you can make judgments on well, what's happened from
then until now as you please. But following that, of
course the interview with Professor Michael Kelly. There are essential
(02:06):
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Farmer Broker Auckland Layton Smith, Emeritus Professor of Engineering, University
(03:41):
of Cambridge is the simple and short introduction to Michael Kelly,
but it short changes his achievements. Professor Kelly studied mathematics
and physics to Master of Science level at Victoria University
in Wellington and completed his PhD in Solid state physics
at Cambridge in nineteen seventy four. He is a Fellow
(04:02):
of the Royal Society in London, the Royal Academy of
Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering in New Zealand.
He's a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of
the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and a Senior Member
of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. In the USA,
He's been awarded prizes for his work from the Institute
(04:22):
of Physics, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society.
But the achievement that he had no input into is
that he is in New Zealander. Roversa. I enjoyed the
last conversation we had a fewsback, I think twenty sixteen.
Welcome back, Thank you very much. Now link for me.
Would you the connection between engineering, because most people would
(04:46):
think that engineering has nothing to do with matters climate
and your status as far as climate's concerned.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Well, let me just point out right at the start,
because I've been branded as a climate change to know
and I want to nail that absolute once and for all.
It is the case that climate has always been changing.
The geologist plenty of records that show us that the
climate has changed, and it's changed in my life and
listening to my parents and grandparents have changed during their life.
(05:17):
So there's no question this climate is changing. The question
that remains is whether the mainkind's contribution, and there is
definitely a mankind contribution, is inevitably or even most likely
going to lead to major catastrophe in our lifetime. Now,
I contrast with the fact that it might cause catastrophe
in two hundred years. But if you can imagine people
(05:40):
standing on the banks of Wellington Harbor in eighteen hundred saying,
perhaps we oughtn't come here because in the next two
hundred years there'll be some major earthquakes. So I want
to be clear about the fact that where the engineering
comes into it is that everybody who's concerned about climate
change wants to stop it. And I'll come on later
(06:02):
to the fact that we don't do enough of talking
about adapting to it. But when you come to stop
it with phrases like a net zero carbon emission's economy
for the world in twenty fifty, this is a phrase
which slips off the tongue and warms the heart of
individuals sitting around contemplating the future. But when it is
(06:24):
then cascaded down into a set of finite, complex and
very large engineering projects that would actually deliver as a
result of those programs and projects being completed, would deliver
the net zero target. Then you start to see some
serious problems and you have to ask a lot of
(06:47):
serious questions about value for money, opportunity costs, and a
whole series of other things. So the basic engineering is
when we decide we're going to do something about it,
what are we going to do? And that's where the
engineering comes in.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Very good. You mentioned twenty fifty. The New Zealand government
appears to want to move it, plans to move it
to twenty. Now the suggestion has been made to me
that they are totally demented, and that was made by
a man of some qualification. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well, I'm not sure about it. I'd use the word tomentum,
but I think grossly mistaken would be still an accurate description.
And I'll tell you why. If you think of the
last ten years in Auckland, you've been talking about trying
to build a light railway from the center of town
to the airport, what you'd have to do for net
(07:42):
zero twenty thirty. There's a project which is about one
hundred times more complicated and bigger than the light railway.
I haven't done the exact calculations, but that's the kind
of problem, and nobody has actually given any thought to
who's going to pay, who's going to do the work,
et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I think that those are irrelevant questions as far as
the administration goes.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Well, that's suidly true that in that case I would
have to claim that they're insincere. I mean, if we
really you know, the Second World War, people said we
are going to fight the invasion from We're going to
stop an invasion from Germany and stop it all, and
they meant it. Now, if they say we're going to
have a twenty to fifty target or thirty tiger, and
(08:30):
in their heart of hearts they don't really mean it, well,
then that's a new phase of public discourse for which
not enough people are ready. I want to just give
you one example. Just I've got one hundred, but here's
just one. All your houses have a sixty amp fuse
in them, so that is when the mains come in,
the first thing they see is a sixty amp fuse. Now,
(08:53):
if we can have an all electric Britain PSIA, because
I've spent a lot of time working in the UK,
all electric New Zealand, we're going to have to electrify
both heat and transport. And so we think of our
house having a fast charger and electric shower. Well, an
electric chower draws forty apps, and remember the main fuse
(09:14):
bock is sixty apps and a fast charger draws thirty
three amps, a more moderate one seven to ten apps.
It's very quickly the case that you will not be.
In fact, a study that's done in the United Kingdom
says that a modern house, a larger shouse, will have
something like a two hundred amp load on it when
(09:36):
many things are going. And so the whole idea that
we're going to get to a net zero target of
twenty thirty and living something like what we're going to do,
it's just going to be impossible in terms of electrifying
heat and transport because nobody has talked about rewiring the
whole of the distribution services. Because not only will you
(10:00):
have to rewire the house, but from the house to
the substation. The substation will be too small, and the
transform will have to be upgrade, and of course you'll
need a grid which is two or three times bigger
than we have at the moment. And if you think
we're going to double the amount of electricity we're going
to have in ten years time. I think you're dreaming.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Let's move the date back to I think what written
is still aiming for, and that is twenty fifty. Does
the same rational apply.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yes, it's actually even worse there. For example, in the
United Kingdom we use far more heat heating houses than
we do heating houses in New Zealand. And the scale
of the problem, what's even worse than the UK is
that the largest dam that could be used for energy
storage has enough energy if you fill the dam and
(10:51):
whales dinner Wig and whales. If you fill it, fill
it and then empty it by charging cars, you can
chargeer point six percent of all small cars in England.
I'm not talking about large range rovers or trucks or vans,
so you know that's one in about one hundred and
fifty cars can be charged. So the scale of the
(11:11):
infrastructure needed to be built to be able to run
even a quarter of the car fleet. Now, of course,
if the people concerned, I've got a more dramatic and
draconian future for us, namely that we're going to live
much more modestly and we will move only one tenth
amount of distance in a year than we do at
(11:32):
the moment, and we need only vegetables from local regions
and that which can be stored from one season to
the next, then that's a different future. We could actually
live a very very modest lifestyle. That is, of course
what has lived in many poorer parts of the world today.
But I don't think that that's part of the deal
(11:54):
that we're being offered.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, there's a quote that I've stole from a comedy
show once, many many decades ago, in fact, and I've
used it ever since, but I haven't brought it out
in a while. So let me exercise it and suggest
that there appears to be certainly a strong push from
a sizeable quarter. They have us all living in caves
(12:18):
and scrubbing ourselves in the creek with a rock, would you.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Well, the point is that's not an offer at the moment.
I mean, that's not in the public discourse. I haven't
heard anybody or referred to anybody in Parliament to get
up and say that. So I'm just assuming that people
are being honest with us and that they want to
get that when they say they want a zero target
(12:42):
to be met by twenty fifty that they're honest about it,
and that they will will the means. Of course, I
don't know. I haven't calculated yet how many engineers will
be needed.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
But I've just done.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Some sums for the first three big projects, which is
to electrify heat, to electrify ground transportation, and to provide
the extra electricity needed for the UK, and I quickly
come to a sum. And I haven't done all the
sums yet, but I'm up to nearly one hundred thousand
dollars per person between now and twenty thirty. Now. One
(13:16):
person to me said the other day that three thousand
dollars per person a year, it's not a lot if
you put it along with other things that we spend
money on, and that may indeed be the case. But
what I would want to do is to have the willpower.
I mean, it's just not resources. I mean, you couldn't give,
for example, all this money to accountants or lawyers and
say build me a new power station or build me
(13:39):
a new set of lines, so that do we have
enough engineers? And of course it's no point trying to
bring in excess engineers from everybody everywhere else in the world,
because everybody else in the world is going to be
facing the same problem. I have a graph which shows
the way that carbon emissions have been exoribly grown since
eighteen eighty and we have to turn them off about
(14:01):
six times as fast in the next thirty years as
we accreted them. And even in the last twenty years
since we've been talking about doing this, the carbon emissions
in the world have inexorably been going up. The point
at stake is that there is one third of the
world's population well more than that, about three billion people
in Africa, South Asia and India, and some extent but
(14:25):
not less so now China, who are still working hard
to aspire towards something that I would describe as a
European style of living. I don't mean a luxurious style
as you get for some people in the United States,
but something where people can afford to have their own
personal means of transport and go on regular holidays and
(14:46):
eat food from around the world at the time of
their choosing. That is an ambition which can be met
provided there is a lot more energy per person available
to these people in the world. The trends over the
last twenty years are set to continue for at least
the next twenty five years, as the world population gradually
(15:07):
comes out of grinding poverty towards a middle class existence.
And just as we used had a forty percent increase
in fossil fuel use between nineteen ninety five and twenty fifteen,
were on scale for another forty percent increase between twenty
fifteen and twenty thirty five, and the absence of the
(15:31):
middle class, at the absence of the poor will take
till nearer twenty fifty to achieve. So while there's this
large increase in stent of living be aspired to by
many people, the carbon emissions are going to go up.
And you know, thirty million, thirty three billion people the
last time I calculated, which was about five hundred times
(15:55):
the population of New Zealand. So we have five hundred
times as many people going the other way in terms
of their use of energy and carbon emissions than we're going.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Let me get back to the administration of of New Zealand,
but not just New Zealand, the various administrations around the world.
You in a presentation that you made last year, energy
utopia is an engineering reality. You quoted three US presidents,
Yes nineteen sixty one, Dwight Eisenhower said he was the
(16:27):
first in holding scientific research and discovery in respect as
we should. We must also be alert to the equal
and opposite danger that public policy could become the captive
of a scientific technological elite. Have we reached that put yet?
Speaker 3 (16:46):
I think in this particular case we have because at
the moment we've got that Parliament in the United Kingdom
and now in New Zealand delegating responsibility to come up
with the ideas for this to a Climate Change Committee,
which in the United Kingdom I know has one materials
(17:07):
engineer on it, no civil engineers or anybody who's got
any personal experience in scoping multi billion pound projects. So
these people can sit there and say it would be
nice to have this, so let's recommend it without any
of the background study, particularly the critical study of the
(17:28):
resources needed, the costs involved, how the finances will be provided,
et cetera, et cetera. And I think it's much the
same in this country. In fact, I've got a line
out to the Climate Change Committee here to make sure
that everything they say that requires engineering is grounded in engineering. Reality.
(17:52):
Engineering isn't everything. And I want to be very clear
about that we can all choose by our own selves
to live a more modest lifestyle, that is, to travel less,
to turn the heating down, to resume what we used
to do when I was a child and Tarnakin and
that's where a pullover inside most of the time for
half of the year when it was cold enough to
(18:13):
warrant it. But that of course has now been largely
abandoned because of central heating and other forms of energy
use in side houses.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
A little later in that presentation, you said much of
what is proposed by way of climate change mitigation is
simply pie in the sky. If it's pie in the sky,
does it mean we're wasting our time in the first place,
or that the governments the government is no.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Think The thing I would say is the following that
we've been talking about all this but no action at scale.
So just over ten years ago, when I was a
scientific advisor, the Climate Change Act in the United Kingdom
being signed in and I pointed out to all the
people in the department that I worked in, which was responsible,
among other things for communities, but also the buildings they
(19:00):
lived in and the condition of the building. I pointed
out that forty five percent of all the emissions used
in the United Kingdom come from heating, air and water
and buildings, and one of the things we're going to
have to do is do a massive retrofit of all
the buildings to make them more energy efficient. In those days,
it was in order to reach an eighty percent reduction
of carbon emissions, let alone one hundred percent in terms
(19:23):
of one hundred percent net as in the net zero.
And we discussed it all and at that time my
advice and a minister set aside seventeen million pounds so
that over one hundred buildings, smaller homes in the social
housing sector were retrofitted, just to see what would be required. Now,
(19:44):
these were all one off projects. I mean, if you
were going to do a national retrofit program, you'd have
a whole supply chain, you'd have the Yellow Pages equivalent
of the whole industry providing everything. But these projects in
the United Kingdom there were about fortieth in which spent
an average of forty five thousand pounds sorry ninety five,
(20:05):
let me get it right, ninety five thousand pounds aiming
to get and eighty percent reduction in carbon emissions, but
only got on average sixty percent. Three out of forty
five got up to eighty percent. Three out of the
forty five didn't even get to thirty percent. So when
you take those numbers and you scale them up not
for an eighty percent reduction, but one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
You get to think it very quickly.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Of two trillion pounds, now you don't have to spend
all of that two trillium, provided you can decarbonize a
lot of the energy somewhere else. Now in this country,
in New Zealand, you have a lot of hydropower, which
is a great benefit that equipment of that comes from
coal and natural gas and nuclear power in Britain. Of course,
nuclear power for most of the civilized world is probably
(20:47):
the way forward because it's the only low carbon emission
form of energy that is available on demand, as opposed
to when the wind's blowing or sun is shining. So
coming back to the issue of retrofitting houses, this would
have been a program which if we'd started ten years ago,
we're just spend five hundred pounds already doing the whole project,
(21:11):
and we've probably spent less than one billion. And so
the issue is that people talk about things but don't
do it, and there's no incentives and when you look
at the payback in terms of saved energy bills at
seventy five years typically, So why would anybody invest their
own money in order to get something which will only
(21:34):
pay off on the time of their grandchildren. Now at
the moment, the only way to actually achieve that in
England will be a direct government fee.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
It let me go back to I was going to
mention point two a few moments ago, and I don't
want to let it go because it's important and I'm
tempted to say, as you see it or read it,
does it tell you that we need to do something
on this planet?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Well?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I think so, but not so Let's think not only
about climate change. There's a lot of other things that
are getting it attraction now, and that's the use of
precious resources. And then what we do at end of life.
You know the amount of waste plastic that's ending up
in the oceans, you know, as it can used to
walk them down the beach in New Plymouth, and I'd
be really happy if I found a bit of fishing
(22:23):
line that had been washed up, because that was another
real I didn't have to buy. But when you go down, down,
and see so much jump there, which is going to
take a long time. There is a case to be
made for living more at ease with the planet. I'm
in the last long and last analysis. I'm actually optimistic
because the world population has been changing since nineteen seventy
(22:46):
and everywhere in the world where there's universal primary education
and more people living in towns and in cities, the
indigenous absolute population is in decline. And just over one
hundred years time the population is going to be seven
billion again, but it's going to be going down from
nine billion at the rate of which has been going
up now. And so I always say, somewhat tongue in
(23:08):
cheek that if there is going to be sea level
rise on I mean, it's quite clear the sea level
is going to rise, has been rising steadily for one
hundred and fifty years, and mankind has probably made a
bit of a contribution, but not a lot. Now, if
that sea level rise continues, there are going to be
billions of empty houses available on higher ground from decreased population.
(23:32):
The population of Italy is predicted, on the present scale
of the fertility of native Italian women, to shrink from
something like its present population to not much more the
population of Rome by twenty one hundred, so it's only
the certain parts of the world where the population is
still increasing. But even there, in places like Bangladesh and Lesotho,
(23:54):
the two places I did a study of the actual
birth rate per family has already dropped from five where
it used to be twenty or thirty years ago, to
two and a half. And the figure you need is
two point one. If the average family, the number of
children per fecund woman drops below two point one in
(24:14):
the population in the population will decline, and it's heading
in almost all parts of the world, not quickly enough
in some cases, but it's already with cass and Europe, Austrodasia, Japan,
and the United States that the population isn't decline in
Europe and Europe.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Back to back to Italy, my materially my favorite country
in the world, my favorite culture. With the with the
population shrinking to the size of Rome, basically that leaves
a lot of spare space, which means that there has
to be massive immigration into into Italy, more so more
so than now wanted or unwanted, legal or otherwise, simply
(24:58):
because the space is there and it will be filled.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
Yes, well, there's a slightly different cut. I mean, the
thing about immigration already now in Germany was that Missus
Merkel was vilified for opening the doors to one million
people now, but when you actually look at whether I'm
all employed, they are doing the jobs a lot of
Germans don't want to do. If you look at the
old people's homes and who's staffing them and who start,
(25:22):
the amount of people in hospitals and various other kinds
of caring communities, the immigrant population is overrepresented. So it
is one of those things that is a two edged sword.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I'm still I'm still not quite satisfied with where we
left your view of what of whether we need to
do anything or not. I'm certainly not going to debate
with you, argue with you over the line that you took.
But does the science tell you that we need to
do something about CO two?
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Well, personally, I don't. It's not a compelling story. Let's
put it this way. There are people who feel that
just I mean, the sort of thing that's been going
on for years, and it was started fifty year years ago,
that we're going to run out of food, and yet
the smartness of mankind, you know, just as I was
saying that was happening. Norman Balloug, the Norwegian scientists working
(26:19):
in the States, prompted a green revolution, and there's far
less hunger as a fraction of the world's population now
than there's ever been. And this year we're headed for
a record grain harvest. So when everybody tells me that
it's all going to go to custard, I want them
to tell me now the year in which the crossover
is going to happen. That is that the destruction because
(26:39):
of climate change is going to exceed the gain and productivity.
It is the case in terms of cereals. I think
that the largest land area ever used was about twenty
years ago and that ever since. Now I could have
be careful this one. It's either that or it's agriculture.
So animals, but one of the farm sizes. Global farm
(27:03):
size are coming down because we're just more efficient in
the way we use each piece of land.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
You said, you said that it was grain that is
the one area that needs the land.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
That's right, Yes, still yes. I mean the point is
that in the case of I can predict, for example,
on the forty year timescale, which after all, is that
it is the time. I've been nearly come over for
year since I've been away. But when I left New
Zealand nineteen seventy one, everybody swore that wool would see
off any form of synthetic fiber as a material for
(27:37):
keeping warm outside. Well, we know that hasn't happened, But
I think within forty years we could have all major
cities being self reliant, self sufficient on their food from
within their own boundaries. There are now a number of
excuse me, vertical farms being developed which have a productivity
of seventy times per unit area than outside. And so
(28:02):
it mightn't be everybody's cup of tea to eat that
sort of thing. But if it's a difference between not
eating and eating food from from a food farm inside
the boundaries, people will eat it.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Give me your thought, then, on the political approach of
corraling people into cities and stopping the spread to even
the suburbs, but certainly beyond, in other words, tight city
boundaries and regulations that limit limit expansion.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Well, I'm all for freedom, make surely rather than putting
too many limits on I'm glad.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
I'm so glad you said that.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well, the other side of it is that we will
do this voluntarily. I mean, people didn't pile into London unwillingly,
and many of them choose right now, a lot of
there's a lot of New Zealand people living in London.
Why are they there because of the excitement and the
buzz that is provided by a city, which is to
be contrasted with the tranquility and stillness and ined sometimes
(29:02):
loneliness out on the countryside. So it's not a matter
of having to legislate for it. It's the way it
maybe like legislating to tell people stay out of Auckland,
you know that would that would even if they tried
it, it probably wouldn't work.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Well, they are moving very rapidly to banning cars.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Well, now, well that's an interesting one because I was
I actually drove fifty kilometers today and I thought, well,
suppose I hadn't been allowed to, or suppose I had
had to wait and get a piece of public transport.
And the problem with public transport is it really does
work in cities like London and Tokyo and that where
(29:44):
it's very high density. But if you want to cycle
from the airport to the center of town, which will
be it's quite a distance and not everybody would be
fit enough to do it, so you need dense forms
of transport. And even if you take the high speed
the link between the city center and the airport, there's
(30:07):
only a small fraction of Auckland citizens who actually live
within walking the little alone cycle distance with that particular feature.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Indeed, talking of the Climate Change Committee in Great Britain,
some of the measures you wrote, some of the measures
introduced by the committee have actually made global emissions worse.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Oh yes, there are a number of examples of that.
The critical one in the UK is that the price
of electricity has an upward wedge on it, and that
wedge of prices to pay for windmills and so on
and so forth. So what it's prompted and almost immediately,
was that the aluminium industry closed down and we now
import our aluminium from China. When the aluminium was made
(30:53):
in the UK, it was made partly with nuclear electricity,
partly with gas and partly with coal. But where we
now import all our eleminum from China, where it's made
exclusively from coal. So while our missions have gone down,
our emissions by consumption have actually gone up. As far
(31:15):
as that is concerned, and it's only the extent to
which we're going to be more and more efficient, and
we are being more and more efficient at using materials
that we can bring that down again. But the immediate
effect over the ten years was to raise the emissions
from al aminum sourcing the aluminum used in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
The World Economic Forum, can I ask your opinion, Well.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
It's what I call a talking shop with four groups
of people. Their are industrialists, academics, political leaders and celebrities.
And as a talking shop, I mean there is an
equivalent talking shop for scientists and technologists. Actually it's run
in Japan and Kyoto every two years that it doesn't
have any celebrities, and there is a serious attempt there
(32:04):
to try and look at the main issues that have
looked at science and technology for in Japan are at
looking after the world's poorer and making sure they get
effective and efficient access to things that the people in
the world that developed world take for granted. But it's
room for a lot of networking and quontificating.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Well they're working. I mean, there is a lot of
publicity being given now an increasing amounts and it'll get
bigger as the next meeting in January gets closer. That
is to do with the great reset, as it's known. Yes,
and they seem to be pulling a lot of support
from journalism and from academia for exactly that.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Well, look, that's the standard way to change people's minds,
and good luck to them. But I think the real
issue is when the proverbial hits the fan or the
rubber hits the road. That's where a lot of these
people whose job is to talk have to stand back
and give way to people who actually do. And that's engineers.
(33:11):
And engineers learned a lesson years ago in Biblical times
from building the Tower of Babel. They didn't know at
the time when they're asked to build the tower. They
didn't know where Heaven was and i in which direction
to build it, or how much it was going to
cost when they started out, and it ended in chaos.
I've got a fairly confident prediction that when we start
(33:36):
to do very big things and then find out part
way through that it's all not going to work. Saying
for fifteen years time, we're going to be nowhere near it.
Well past twenty thirty, people are going to be asking
serious questions how do we get to this mess And
the problem is there's nobody being given a voice to
actually say but hang on a minute, Hang on a minute. So,
(33:58):
for example, if we were to convert the whole of
the UK car fleet tomorrow to a vehicle fleet tomorrow
to electric cars, we would need a significt confraction of
the amount of copper use in the world, nearly half
of all the lithium and more of disposium, neodonium, some
of the other rare earth metals they are sourced today
(34:21):
in the world, just to provide the UK with electric
cars and the energy infrastructure to allow them to operate. Now,
when you think that the UK itself is less than
one percent of the population of the world, you then
suddenly find that we've got to treble that sort of
thing to actually get a stop. Now, eventually you're setting
(34:43):
into a mode of recycling, you won't need so much.
But the step jump to make the transition is of
a size that people haven't given adequate thought about.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
In your initial conclusions from that presentation, there were three
three man energy equals quality of life, and we intervene
there only with the most convincing of cases. Correct, has
that changed?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
No true yes. I mean the point is at the moment,
everybody in Europe today uses about ten times as much
energy per person as somebody two hundred years ago. It's
really interesting to see where that energy goes. They use
about three times as much energy today just on the
(35:27):
manufacture and the distribution of stuff. That's all stuff that
gone by. If you think of a house in eighteen hundred,
it had a few utensils and a few family treasures
and a little bit of furniture. If you contrast that
with home to that's full of stuff. Well, we use
three times as much energy per person per day to
(35:47):
generate and purchase that stuff. We also use the same
amount total amount of energy per person today that somebody
used in Europe two hundred years ago, just on our
private motory. And there are things like this to god,
so we use about seven times as much. So and
if you look at the trend in particular presentation in
(36:10):
your phone to, I think it's one of the earlier
figures shows the way in which the population has increased
and by about sevenfolds since eighteen hundred, that the energy
use has increased about forty twofold or forty fivefold. Second
and GDP have gone up several hundred fold.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
Your second point was initial conclusions renewables do not come
close to constituting a solution to the climate change problem
for the industrialized world. My only question is is New
Zealand in that category.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
No, it's an outline to along with Along with Norway,
these are two countries with low density population, lots of mountains. Now,
of course, if we were to electrify the grid in
order to provide for electric cards and particular electric trucks,
we would have to double more than double, in fact
treble the size of the grid. Now the question is
(37:04):
where is all that extra electricity coming from. Well, very
little of it will come from hydro, because there is
enough pushback against any form of new hydro. But the
idea of doubling our capacity is just not conceivable. The
question about wind, well, I'm waiting to see the lifetime
of some of the winds, some of the ones, some
(37:26):
of the wind turbines offshore in England because of the
ice associated with winter storms starting to free the laminations
on the blades, so it's not clear they will last
as long as they thought they would. So there's a
whole series of things which make me think that we're
going to fall far short, particularly the demand, the demand
(37:47):
for land area to We need civil to something like
the whole size of Auckland and solar panels covered literally
to provide the solar contribution to this all electrified.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I struggle to see it ever happening.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Well, that's that's my point. You can write it in principle. Well,
I've been trying, but have failed so far to actually
show that the transition actually violates the laws of thermodynamics.
If I could do that, I'd be in a much
more powerful position. But it's a bit like the Second
World War, where people said, look, it doesn't matter how
much it costs, we're going to build whatever it takes.
We're going to do whatever it takes because we have
(38:27):
to beat an enemy. So far, at the moment, there
is no way that climate change is portrayed. Well, they're
trying to portray it as an existential enemy, but you
see now you find that they've gone too far. So
I've got colleagues who are pulling back, so that when
the Norwegian scientists last week said, look, it's a real
(38:48):
existential threat. You know, some of our kids are going
to die in their lifetime from climate change, and then
the more greening of the parents staying their kids, we
don't really need to study at school because you're going
to die before you grow up. I mean, this sort
of thing is now being wound back as being grossly excessive.
It was interesting that even of the initial wife of
(39:11):
Stephen Hawking was convinced when she married that they weren't
going to live for very long because Europe was going
to go up in a nuclear bomb. In the late
sixties early seventies.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
It was a.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
Prevailing view among many people at that time. But it
just hasn't happened indeed. So now let me just say
there's another whole point that I haven't even got on here,
which I think is even more important that we have
to study. Let's suppose, for example, that the sea level
does inexorably continue to arise, and by that I mean
(39:44):
people that are within a meter of the sea level
even behind will need to have walls built along the shore,
you know, from all around Wellington Harbor or wrong all
our main cities and near the sea. It would not
take long. It would be a significant engineering project, but
no bigger than say a motorway project to build a
(40:05):
wall that will protect all of our major as sets
from one meter of sea level rise? Now, who is
doing the scoping of that? Who was investing in that?
And so everybody is spending their time on trying to
mitigate climate change, I think we should be doing a
lot of preparation for adapting to it. So the example
(40:28):
I always gives is the Thames Barrier in London. There's
a big storm that flooded lots of England in nineteen
fifty three, and people said, look, the next time we
have one alike of those, that's going to really do
for the central London. So the people started doing the
actual aerial calculations and by the mid eighties came to
the inclusion if they built the Thames Barrier now, the chances
(40:49):
are that in its design lifetime it will pay back
its cost more than payback its cost and savings from
insurance claims against flooding in London. And that's indeed what's happened.
Now they're even doing the actual calculations to say when
will they put another meter on that barrier. Now, I
think there should be for every pound that's being put
(41:10):
into climate change mitigation, we should be setting aside a
pound or a dollar in this case for climate change adaptation,
and particularly when as I come back to what I
said at the start that five hundred times as many
people in the world are going directly in the opposite
direction as we are about their personal consumption, which is
all continuous as it ever has been to be eighty
(41:32):
five percent provided by fossil fuel.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
As briefly as you like the last point in your conclusions,
China is not the beacon of hope it is portrayed
to be.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
What do you mean, Well, I think when I looked
at people say they're doing wonderful things. But they are
doing wonderful things. They're spending more on all of these
things together, but it's still making a very small impact.
You know, the Chinese are still building coal fire power stations,
and quite a lot of them now. The secret about China, though,
(42:03):
is that its population is going to stop increasing in
about ten years from now, and by twenty sixty already
the population of China will be less than it was
in the year two thousand and this almost no revolution
in fertility and democratics will make any difference to that statement.
(42:25):
So is the problem over the next few years is
going to be Africa, India and South Asia.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Sitting on my desk in front of in front of me.
Up to the side is a book by Clive Hamilton,
The Silent Invasion, China's Influence in Australia. He's on my
list sometime soon. I wanted to extract from you what
your thoughts were on that. Let me say that it's
been a pleasure talking with you. I would have loved longer.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
God, thanks very much. All I'm wanting is for there
to be a debate about this, so that everybody goes
into what they're doing with their eyes open for the
upsides and the downsides. And at the moment I'm afraid
there's very little reluctance to have this debate. I mean,
I actually wrote a serious paper about the cost of
(43:15):
electrifying the British economy and the consequences are directly in
contradiction to several of the studies put out by the
Climate Change Committee, and I think some of their comments
have got engineering flaws in them. And I asked to
please to be able to engage with them on this
(43:37):
very serious matter. But the replier got from the Secretary's
Chief executive is thank you very much. For your critique,
but we choose not to engage with you full stop.
So I think that just says it all. I mean,
if I was done Tom Dick or Harry with some
fancy isolated be in my bonnet, that's one thing. But
(43:59):
what I've got is a serious takedown of some of
their issues, and I'd like to find out. I mean,
if I'm wrong, I'm being made it very clear that
I'll make a public retraction and go away.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
But so far.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
I'm not wrong, and.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I don't believe you are. It's been a great pleasure.
Thank you, good bye, Michael.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Out of the op ed in The Australian on Monday
the thirtieth of November, written by our friend Nick Kato.
He anchors it around the rud Royal Commission in Australia
into diversity in the media. He's upset. He and Malcolm
Turnbull are both upset. They're always upset, but on this
occasion they're upset about the about the Murdoch Press and
(45:01):
the number of newspapers that Murdock owns. As I think
Nick Kato says somewhere here, what they're really upset about
is the number of people who are buying the Murdoch
papers anyway, it's headed Media and diversity alive, but not
at all well in New Zealand, and I pick it
up where it matters to us. The media paradise that
Rudd craves looks somewhat like New Zealand, where inoffensive newspapers
(45:24):
compete for drabness and commentators are all but united in
adoration of Jasindra Adern. You'll struggle to read a word
of dissent in the four daily newspapers. Mike Hosking and
some of his fellow presenters are prepared to break from
the pack at Newstalk ZEDB, but that's it. Retired Zenby
host Layton Smith remains in the fray as a podcaster
and colomnist. But when it comes to broadcast media, Hosking
(45:47):
is Alan Jones, Chris Kenny, Andrew Bolt, Peter Credlin and
Paul Murray rolled into one. I suggest there's a bit
too much collagen injected into that, but nevertheless he's close.
The only hint of irritation at the Prime Minister's weekly
press conference is that she isn't running fast enough with
her agenda of transformational change. The umbrellatur for the writing
(46:09):
of social injustices, including those yet to be invented. Adern's
decision to hold a referendum on the legalization of cannabis
was widely praised as another step on the path to sainthood.
The proposal was rejected by fifty one point six percent
of voters, prompting this exchange Media. In terms of governing
for all New Zealanders, you do have forty eight point
(46:31):
four percent of New Zealanders who did vote for legalized cannabis,
the PM and the majority who didn't, So we have
to be mindful of that too. Media, you have promised
to govern for all those of New Zealanders, including the
forty eight point four percent who did. There's an appetite
among an enormous section of the population for something, and
(46:51):
obviously the referendum did fail, But it doesn't mean can
we assume that because forty eight point nine percent of
Americans didn't vote for Joe Biden that Donald Trump can
stay in the White House? Or does the ballot only
count when the left is winning. Those with the more
sophisticated understanding of life liberal democracy than media in brackets
(47:11):
the generic name ascribed to journalists in the transcript. Presumably
because they are all of one mind, those brackets may
be feeling a little queasy. A prime minister who tells
voters she chose politics because it was the profession that
would make me feel I was making a difference, and
holds an absolute majority in the Parliament's only chamber is
(47:33):
an accident waiting to happen. An independent media should be
the first responders in such circumstances, ready to erect barriers
in the path of the Prime Minister should she swerve
across the line. Yet the press pack is not merely
on the bus. They're telling her how to drive it.
New Zealand's small population and splendid isolation a part of
the explanation for the enfeeblement of its media. A derned
(47:56):
sledgehammer response to the COVID nineteen pandemic hastened the decline.
In May nine, Entertainment let go of newspapers it inherited
from Fairfax, the Dominion Post, the Press and the Sunday
Star Times for one dollar to a company that goes
by the name of Stuff. It seems like a bargain.
(48:16):
Given the copy of the Post the newsstand will set
you back two dollars ninety, hardly a vote for confidence
in the future of the media. Yet market size is
only part of the explanation. It doesn't explain why, for example,
a country split politically down the middle, one hundred percent
of daily newspapers and virtually every TV and radio station
stands proudly with a DERN. We can only conclude that
(48:39):
commercial logic no longer applies. Media companies are no longer
driven by the pursuit of unserved segments of the market.
It's not the product that is faulty, but the customer.
When commercially minded proprietors leave the building, the journalists take charge.
They are university educated professionals cut from the same narcissistic
(48:59):
cloth as a Dern. They too want to feel like
they're making a difference. When the collapse of New Zealand's
fourth estate, it's difficult to see what might stop a
journalism becoming the country's official religion. The National Party is
in no position to offer effective political opposition. The party
that reinvented credible government in New Zealand is bruised from
two defeats, uncertain who should lead or in what direction
(49:23):
it should lead. Intellectual opposition is all but extinguished in
the universities, but still flickers on in alternative media, blogs,
websites and YouTube channels, which serve as a faint beacon
of dissent. And he concludes by going back to the
situation across the Tasman. Is this what Rudd seeks the
(49:44):
last thing a country needs as a prime minister? Basking
and applause. Who switches on the news and finds herself
staring at the mirror. Well it was pretty damning, you
might say. Whether you think he's one hundred percent correct
or not is entirely up to your interpretation of things.
But I know this already beat a lot of support, So.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
There you have it.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Professor Michael Kelly be very interested in your comments one
way or the other, but I imagine that most people
will be supporters of Michael Kelly by this stage anyway.
Latent at newstalksib dot co dot z or Carolyn wi
a Y at NEWSTALKSIDB dot co dot Nz. Podcast two
ninety eight was originally going to be with Christian in London,
(50:45):
but a couple of things got in the way, so
he will be here next week. I know there's plenty
of people who are very keen to hear what he's
got to say this time round. In fact, Christian, come
here please. What what do you mean by what? It's
true that you were going to be on this week,
but things got in the way. As I just said,
so will you be available for next week? For podcasts
(51:09):
to ninety nine, I will be depending on the Greek
medical system.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
That's a hint.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Just wait, there's a story to come, believe me. So
next week we'll be with Christian Smith, and then for
three hundred. I really don't know who's going to be
the guest for that big occasion because there are so
many possibilities. However, we'll be back next week. Until then,
(51:38):
as always, thank you for listening and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Thank you for more from News Talks at b Listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.
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