The Briefing

The health organisation OraTaiao convened a group of experts to analyse the climate change policies of NZ political party policies. This blog takes a supplementary approach, looking at actual climate related actions taken in the last Parliamentary term (since late 2014).

A just published modelling study by the BODE3 Team has reported that “home safety assessment and modification” (e.g., adding hand rails and removing tripping hazards in homes) appears to be a very cost-effective health sector intervention. But even more cost-effective was targeting this intervention to older people with previous injurious falls.

Building insulation provides comfort and health benefits to occupants, saves energy, enhances energy security, and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This blog looks at these issues and wonders why the NZ Government is not doing more to enhance building performance and insulation standards when it is such a good investment.

Recent flooding events in New Zealand should make us think about the adverse public health and economic impacts. This blog post considers these issues, and suggests that there may be scope for further preventive action by central and local government.

In this blog post we briefly explore the arguments around such disinvestment from fossil fuels from a public health perspective.

Professor Alistair Woodward, epidemiologist and climate change expert. Alistair was Convening Lead Author of Chapter 11 (Human Health) in the 5th IPCC Assessment Report. Here he discusses the report.

The 2014 edition of the “Climate Change Performance Index” has just been released by Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch. This blog post looks at some of the details and considers what NZ could be aiming for if it is to be a responsible “international citizen”.

New Zealand still has a problem with the use of mobile phones while driving. This blog discusses recent research and suggest ways to make further progress on reducing this persisting hazard.

It’s official, this was the warmest winter ever recorded for New Zealand according to NIWA scientists. Continuing warming of the planet may pose significant risks of run-away climate change and catastrophic levels of damage to human civilisation – a public health threat on a scale larger than we usually consider.