Debatable: Should climate change be an individual responsibility?

Posted 7:56pm Sunday 21st April 2024 by Julia Randerson

Debatable is a column written by the Otago University Debating Society. The Debating Society welcomes new members and meets at the Business School every Tuesday at 6pm. For Let’s face it: the UN’s climate conferences are infamously ineffective, corporations tend to dislike any Read more...

Greenie Grandma Found Guilty

Posted 12:52pm Sunday 9th July 2023 by Nina Brown

Local greenie grandma Rosemary Penwarden was found guilty of forgery by a recent Dunedin High Court trial. Rosemary sent a fake letter in 2019 to attendees of an oil conference in Queenstown telling them it had been postponed due to the climate crisis. Though the letter was meant to be satirical, Read more...

Have Your Say on the Zero Carbon Survey

Posted 3:52pm Sunday 26th March 2023 by Zak Rudin

The DCC has pledged to go carbon neutral by 2030, and they are asking for the help of locals to get there. Their “Zero Carbon Ōtepoti survey” is a handy opportunity to have a say on issues including transport, energy use at home, and waste management  - all from the comfort of Read more...

Dunedin SS4C Strike Underwhelms

Posted 2:04pm Sunday 12th March 2023 by Emily Esplin

School Strike 4 Climate (SS4C) and Fridays for Future joined forces in a nation-wide intergenerational climate strike across the motu on Friday, March 3. The Ōtepoti event, whose organisation was outsourced to Extinction Rebellion (XR), was smaller than most other cities, prompting some Read more...

University Emissions Report: Behind the Pretty Numbers

Posted 12:47am Saturday 23rd April 2022 by Zak Rudin

In our last issue, Critic Te Arohi reported that the Uni’s carbon emissions dropped 40% in 2020 compared to 2019. We spoke with Craig Cliff, the Uni’s Net Carbon Zero Programme Manager, to help us understand what is going on. The report showed that most of the 40% actually came from a Read more...

Uni’s Carbon Emissions Dropped In 2020

Posted 1:35am Saturday 9th April 2022 by Denzel Chung

A new report has found the Uni’s carbon emissions dipped by 40% in 2020, to 30,661 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). Reasons for the decrease include a lockdown, fewer jet-setting employees and a coal phaseout. The Uni’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory was released in Read more...

The Great White: Students in Antarctica

Posted 6:01pm Friday 1st April 2022 by Fox Meyer

Will was soaking in a 250 litre drum filled with hot water. Hundreds of metres away, in a tent, someone was watching Derry Girls. In this moment, to Will, the audio coming from that TV show was the only sound in the entire world. Will was in Antarctica, at New Zealand’s Scott Base. A Read more...

New IPCC Report: Impending Irreversible Climate Devastation (again)

Posted 2:35pm Sunday 6th March 2022 by Zak Rudin

As if a global pandemic and the threat of world war weren’t enough, the cheerful souls at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have threatened climate-related mayhem will be coming for us as well. Again.  The IPCC report, “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Read more...

Magnolias in Quad Blooming Earlier

Posted 1:28pm Monday 16th August 2021 by Fox Meyer

Each year, bets are taken on when the first Magnolia bloom will appear between the Clocktower and Quad. This year it was August 10. The average blooming date has gotten earlier and earlier since records began in 1995. Gut instinct would attribute this early blooming to climate change. As seasons Read more...

Shaky At Best: The New Zealand Earthquake Forecasting Page With Links to Pseudoscience

Posted 10:09pm Sunday 18th April 2021 by Acasta Gneiss

At first glance, NZ Earthquake Community is a reputable Facebook page. It’s filled with content from GeoNet and advice about earthquake safety. It’s also only six clicks away from a crackpot’s RV in New Mexico.  Information on the page comes from two sources. If you follow Read more...