Submission on the Schedule 4 discussion document about mining access

The government has recently released a discussion paper proposing the removal of several areas of land from Schedule 4 conservation status. While the document seems to more or less capture and consider the conservation value of the land itself, the government seems to be paying little attention to the wider potential environmental impacts of mining in these areas - especially the possibility for coal mining in the Inangahua sector of Paparoa National Park. NASA's James Hansen - one of the world's leading climatologists - says that coal-fired power plants are literally death factories, having huge impacts on human health and the planet. These are my responses to the discussion document submission questions. If you'd like to make a submission yourself, the online submission form is here.

Q1 On the areas proposed for removal from Schedule 4:

Section 7 of this document sets out the areas proposed for removal from Schedule 4. Do you think these areas should be removed from Schedule 4 so that applications for exploration and mining activity can be considered on a case-by-case basis? Yes or No? And why?

I oppose the removal of the areas proposed for removal from Schedule 4, and especially the removal of the Inangahua sector of Paparoa National Park and Coromandel Peninsula areas. While the general conservation value of these areas has been identified in the discussion document, my primary concern is the potential greenhouse gas impacts of allowing the potential for mining activities in these areas. Specifically, the possibility for coal mining at the Inangahua section of Paparoa National Park, and to a less extent the potential for peat mining in the Coromandel Peninsula has the potential for resulting in significant quantities of greenhouse gas emissions – both during the mining and processing process, and during the eventual use of these materials (e.g. in power production). Methane, a greenhouse gas many times more powerful than carbon dioxide, is released during the process of coal mining. Carbon dioxide is also released in very substantial quantities as the result of the burning of coal for power production. Similarly, methane and carbon dioxide are released in the peat mining process, and carbon dioxide is released if the peat is burned as fuel.

In addition to greenhouse gas impacts, the burning of coal as fuel also produces other significant air pollutants, including sulfur dioxide (which can result in acid rain), and produces other dangerous waste products such as fly ash, arsenic, lead, mercury, barium, and radium.

While the government has taken pains to point out the potential for “surgical” mining operations to minimise environmental impacts, much of the potential for environmental damage of mining (and coal mining in particular) occurs after the mining process. If we are to open these Schedule 4 areas up to mining, New Zealand must take responsibility for all the resulting environmental impacts – not merely those at the mining site itself.

Anthropogenic climate change has the potential to produce significant damage to this planet that lasts for centuries or millennia, affecting the lives of our children and grandchildren for many generations to come: history will not look kindly on us as the generation to see the problem but not take action. To aggressively pursue fossil fuel (e.g. coal) resources even in areas we have already established as being of great conservation value is the very opposite of what history and the planet demands of us right now: to swiftly and significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, before it is too late.

Q2 On the areas proposed for addition to Schedule 4:

Section 8 of this document sets out the areas proposed for addition to Schedule 4. Do you agree with the proposal to add these areas to Schedule 4? Yes or No? And why?

I support the addition of these areas to Schedule 4 classification. I further believe that the Crown Minerals Act should be amended so that these additions should be automatic each time new lands are gazetted into National Parks and the other land classification types listed in Schedule 4.

Q3 On the assessment of areas:

The assessment of areas covered by Schedule 4 and those proposed for addition is outlined in sections 7 and 8 of this document and Appendices 1 and 2.

(a) What are your views on the assessment of the various values (conservation, cultural, tourism and recreation, mineral, other) of the land areas discussed?

The discussion document seems to provide a roughly adequate, if limited, coverage of the conservation and cultural values of the Section 4 land areas themselves. However, more detailed analysis of the environmental impacts of possible mining at these sites (beyond merely potential damage at the actual mining site) is conspicuously missing. Environmental impacts that should have been assessed in details include possible greenhouse gas emissions produced during the mining, processing and usage of mined minerals and organic deposits, the potential polluting effect of the processing of minerals and ore, the potential for very large quantities of mining waste products, and air pollution potentially resulting from the eventual burning of mined fuels such as coal.

Q4 On the proposal to further investigate the mineral potential of some areas:

The Government is carrying out a research and investigation programme on the mineral potential of areas with significant mineral potential over the next nine months, including the Coromandel, parts of Paparoa National park and Rakiura National Park, and a number of non-Schedule 4 areas.

(a) Do you have any comments on the type of information that would be the most useful to mineral investors?

I find this question problematic in that I believe that the investigation should produce information that is useful to other stakeholders rather than only mineral investors (e.g. information about the potential environmental impacts involved in pursuing mineral deposits in the areas mentioned). The wording of this item implies that the government prioritises mineral investors over other such stakeholders.

(b) Are there any particular areas that the Government should consider including in its investigation programme?

I believe that any further investigation of the mineral potential should include a comprehensive assessment of the expected greenhouse gas/carbon “footprint” that would eventuate as a result of the mining of mining resources identified. This investigation should incorporate information about the greenhouse gas footprint involved in mining, processing, and use of any minerals and fossil fuels to be mined (including uses such as the burning of organic minerals for power production).

Q5 On a new contestable conservation fund:

Section 9 describes a proposed contestable conservation fund the Government proposes to establish, which would be made up of a percentage of the money the Crown receives from minerals (except petroleum) from public conservation areas.

(a) A broad objective, to enhance conservation outcomes for New Zealand, is proposed for the fund. Do you agree with the proposed objective?

No. Given the growing interconnectedness (and interdependencies) of countries across the world, and especially in light of the global climate change crisis, New Zealand must extend the focus of its conservation efforts to global conservation issues. An alternative goal could be “to enhance local and global conservation outcomes”.

(b) What do you think the fund should be used for? What should its priorities be?

I believe that the fund should have as one of its priorities the aim of making a positive contribution to the understanding of global climate change and the potential for mitigating this change. This could be achieved by the funding of research examining climate change and the technological possibilites for its mitigation, as well as practical mitigation efforts such as promoting the planting and retention of forests to remove carbon dioxide by photosynthesis.

I furthermore believe that this fund should absolutely not be used to fund mining companies for remediation work on mined land. The mining companies themselves should bear the full cost of such work.

(c) An independent panel appointed by the Minister of Energy and Resources and the Minister of Conservation is proposed to run the fund. Do you think this is a good idea?

No. If the fund is genuinely intended as a conservation fund, the Minister of Energy and Resources should have no role in determining its administrators. The independent panel should be appointed by the Minister of Conservation, preferably in consultation with the environmental spokespeople of the other political parties represented in parliament.

(d) It is proposed that half of royalties from public conservation areas are contributed to the fund, with a minimum of $2 million per year for the first four years, and a maximum of $10 million per year. Do you think the amounts proposed for the fund are appropriate?

While the minimum amount may be appropriate, there seems to be little reason to cap the possible contributions at the relatively moderate amount of $10 million pa. I would propose applying no limit to the contribution; this policy could be amended at a later stage.

(e) Do you have any other comments that might help the Government to make decisions on a new conservation fund?

While this fund would be a positive step, I note that the government cut $54 million from the Department of Conservation’s core budget last year. I strongly believe that conservation should be a major priority for New Zealand, and that this funding should therefore be reinstated. The current proposed conservation fund should not in any way be used to justify reductions in funding for DOC.

Q6 On approval of access arrangements:

In section 6 it is proposed that the joint approval of the land-holding Minister and the Minister of Energy and Resources be required for an access arrangement on Crown land for mineral exploration or development. Do you think this is appropriate? Why or why not?

No. This change seems to be focused on sharing decision-making power over access arrangements to public conservation land with a development-focused minister. Conservation land is land that has been designated of primary conservation value: decisions about access arrangements to such land should be made by a competent Minister of Conservation, not a Minister whose portfolio focus is concerned with economic development.

Q7 On any other issues:

Do you have any further suggestions or comments on what has been said in this document?

I strongly believe that any proposal to increase access to New Zealand's mineral and fossil fuel reserves should be made with the potential impact on New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions as the first and most important focus. The mining and use of coal is a particularly important issue to consider. In a paleoclimate study, Hansen et al. (2008) have argued that swiftly phasing out the use of coal in power production is a vital step in reducing the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide to a safe level of 350 ppm, a proposal I strongly agree with.

Software for research and study - apps that keep me sane

I've been studying for an awfully long time. The studying life can be hard, but since it allows me to wake up at noon and work while watching cricket, I don't see myself toddling off to contribute to the nation's GDP anytime soon.

It's only recently, though, that I've started to clever software from the internets to help organise and keep safe my literature collections, citations, and documents. I used to do all my referencing manually all through undergrad and much of postgrad, but there comes a time when you realise it's time to use the tools that are out there to save more time for drinking and catching up on Gossip Girl. Here are my top five favourite applications to help me with my work - hopefully they might help others too.


Zotero
Zotero is a reference management application (like Endnote, sort of). Unlike Endnote, however, it's free and open source. Zotero has cite while you write plug-ins for Word and Open Office, which I find somewhat better than Endnote's as they allow easy editing of citation name display without using the 'exclude author' option [e.g. changing from '(Johnson & Wills, 2005)' to 'Johnson and Wills (2005)']. It's also not nearly as prone to destroying pieces of work when you do terrible things like, say, copying and pasting a reference from one paragraph to another. The real benefit of Zotero, though, is its capabilities in terms of saving and organising literature and citation data - when looking at an article or abstract from an online database, one click will save both the literature and its citation data. You can then organise literature into collections, apply tabs, attach rich text notes to articles, and annotate (html) documents. Zotero actually works as an add-on to Mozilla Firefox, which means no problems with cross-platform work, and has a very active forum-based support community.

Dropbox
Dropbox is a very simple online sync/save app that means you can stop worrying about emailing documents to yourself or using a flash drive if you're working across multiple computers. Dropbox works very simply: a "My Dropbox" folder is installed wherever you want it in your computer, and you put your important docs/literature etc. into this folder. Dropbox then continuously syncs whatever's in your My Dropbox folder to their online server. You can then install Dropbox on another computer, and data in the My Dropbox folders on each computer will be kept synchronised! You can also log on to the Dropbox website to access and download your documents (and revert recent deletions) when you're on a computer where installing the Dropbox app isn't practicable. Dropbox is free for the first 2GB of storage, with paid options for more space, and 250MB extra if you invite friends/accept an invite to start with. The link below is an invite from me and will give both thee this extra 250 megs:
https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE1MjU0MzE5

Do be aware that there is the possibility that DropBox employees could look at what you have in your storage - so for sensitive information (e.g. participant data) I'd suggest encryption (e.g. via TrueCrypt).

Syncback
While DropBox is great, I don't use it as my primary storage point for my main project (MA thesis) at the moment because of the quantity of literature and documents I have and the fact that I do most of my work at home and only a little at uni - i.e., getting the My Dropbox folder at uni up to date means waiting a fair while for stuff to download each time I do use the uni labs. So I still use a flash drive for my main collection, with backups to My DropBox on my laptop hard drive (you can't install a My Dropbox folder on a flash drive without mounting trickery and risking deletion when you remove the drive). To backup the data on my flash drive I use Synback, a really nice and easy to use backup/synchronisation utility. Synback allows both manually run and scheduled backup and synchronisation tasks - it's pretty much as simple as choosing a source (the folder/s you want to backup) and a destination (where to back up to), and you're away. Synback uses incremental backups, so it can backup only data that has been changed since the last backup - making it a very quick process usually.

The only sticking point for me is that Syncback requires administrator privileges for installation, meaning I can't install it on my network drive at university. I've tried a few different other backup utilities that don't require admin privileges, but without much joy. Suggestions welcome.

Pdfxchange Viewer
In the past, if I wanted to make notes and annotations to a journal article in pdf format, I'd either print it or create a new Word document with notes about the article. Both of these options are a massive pain. Pdfxchange is a pdf viewer (much like Adobe Reader), but unlike Reader, it allows highlighting and annotations (except where these options have been specifically deactivated by the document author). Being able to highlight and add text notes to articles in pdf format is just fantastic. Of course, when working at uni you usually have access to the full (expensive) Adobe Acrobat, so making annotations is easy enough - if you do most of your work at uni, changing file associations so Adobe Acrobat (rather than Reader) is the default application for pdf files is a good alternative to pdfxchange.

Pdfxchange is Windows-based, but can be run via Wine in Linux - I haven't figured out how to make pdfxchange work as the default file association for pdf files in Linux though (you need to use a script apparently - just changing the file association in the usual way opens pdfxchange in Wine but doesn't open the document, strangely).

PDFill PDF Tools and PDF Writer
Aside from annotations and highlighting, I often need to save Word documents in pdf format or remove unnecessary pages from a pdf document (e.g. scanned cover pages from interloaned documents which waste space). These two utilities from PDFill are great for this. To use the writer you just go to print your Word document and select PDFill write from the printer options, whereas PDF Tools is a standalone app with easy to use options. I actually think the writer was automatically installed when I installed the tools app, so you might not need to download both.


Thoughts on these applications and the apps that help you with your research very welcome!

How to get your tax refund without paying some fool a cut

There's been a bit of media stuff lately about sites you can use to get tax refunds from the IRD if you've got any owing - taxrefunds.co.nz, etc. In these dark times of economic crisis and python invasions it's pretty handy to be able to get some cash back from Johnny Key - but the thing about these sites and the tax refund dudes hanging out in the malls is that they take a pretty hefty cut of your refund (something like 15%), and some of them have a hidden-away clause that by signing up you're appointing them as your tax agent for here and evermore.

So I thought, maybe I should be a helpful bear and show how you can get your refunds, if you have any due, directly through the IRD. It really isn't terribly hard - "doing your taxes" sounds fuckin' awful, but nowadays it's mostly just about filling out a few forms on the interweb.

1. First thing is, you need your earnings and tax paid figures for the years you're looking at. I'd suggest looking at the years ended 31Mar05 to 31Mar09 - you can't request a personal tax summary further back than that. I'm not sure if there's a way around this, but shit, five years is enough. Btw, 2009 tax year = year ended 31 March 2009.

The main type of earnings for most of us will be wages and interest on bank accounts (maybe you've also got shares and/or unit trusts, which need to be taken into account for years prior to the PIE changeover, but if you're that set up you can figure your own shit out). There are 3 ways you can get your wages and tax paid deets:

a) From a summary of earnings from the IRD (if you happen to have been sent one, sweet). You can request one here
b) From a payslip - get the one at the end of the financial year in question and look at the year to date balances. Unfortunately the PAYE figure is NOT your income tax paid - for 2008 and 2009 you will need to subtract the ACC earner's levy from the PAYE to get the tax paid. Historical ACC levy rates -although for 2005 through 2007 the online calculators will automatically do this for you (go knows why the newer ones are harder to use).
c) Set up an Online Services account at the IRD - this is what I'd recommend, it's hella convenient - you can access all your earnings info, check KiwiSaver balances, send and receive secure email, etc. Registration here (I think you need to wait for them to send you a letter with password etc - been ages since I set mine up.

You can get interest figures from your bank statements; some banks let you generate interest-paid statements for each financial year online; or you can ask your bank for the interest earned and tax paid figures for the years you're interested in by calling them. You don't really need physical certificates, but if your bank has sent you one, sweet.

2. Look to see whether you've got a refund due using the IRD's online calculators. If it shows tax to pay, don't sweat it yet.

For 2008 and 2009, you need to subtract your ACC earner's levy from your PAYE before entering the 'tax deducted' figure into the calculator (if you are using a payslip - if you are using an IRD summary no worries)
Personal tax summary calculation 2009
Personal tax summary calculation 2008

For 2005 through 2007, the online calculator will deduct your ACC earner's levy automatically - just click the payslip option (if this is what you're using) and enter your PAYE in the indicated box.
Personal tax summary calculation 2007
Personal tax summary calculation 2006
Personal tax summary calculation 2005

3. Ok, so probably at this stage you've got a few years with refunds due and a few years with tax to pay. But you'd prefer to just get the refunds and ignore the tax-to-pay years, obviously. So, for the years with tax to pay, you need to find out whether you actually have to request a personal tax summary (PTS) and make the payment.

This page gives the broad guidelines on who'll automatically be sent a PTS, who might want to get one, and who HAS to get one. If you'd like to be sure, the online worksheets below will tell you whether you MUST request a personal tax summary for the given years. Most of us won't have to get one - though I have to because of earning over $200 interest while having a student loan.

Do you need to file an IR3 return or receive a personal tax summary for 2009?
Do you need to file an IR3 return or receive a personal tax summary for 2008?
Do you need to file an IR3 return or receive a personal tax summary for 2007?
Do you need to file an IR3 return or receive a personal tax summary for 2006?
Do you need to file an IR3 return or receive a personal tax summary for 2005?

4. Right. So now you know if you have any sweet refunds due, and which (if any) years you HAVE to request a personal tax summary. So now it's time to request the bastards (remember to do a request for each of the years you've decided on):
Request a personal tax summary

And that's it! The personal tax summary will come in the mail within an admittedly whopping 45 working days - although mine were a lot quicker. The IRD will check your figures and usually give you the refund or tax to pay figure that you got from the online calculator (or something close to it - they round off some of the figures). If there's a refund to come it'll go automatically to your bank account within a month after (as long as they've got your number). If there's tax to pay I think you have a bunch of different ways to pay... in my case I had small tax to pay figures for a few of the years (ones where I had to request a PTS) and they seem to just be offsetting the tax to pay against the biggish refunds I've got due for the other years.

Ok, so it's a bit of work and takes a while, but this way you get ALL the money due ya - and based on others' experience with the dodge refunds companies, this way seems to be no slower than getting the money through them. I'd recommend saving the worksheet results you get for the various things in Word or something as you go, btw. Choice!