Motu is a charitable trust, founded in 2000 with the aim of to promoting well informed and reasoned debate on public policy issues relevant to New Zealand decision making.
The institute aims to be fully independent, with no expressed ideology or political position. Their research reports include such areas as innovation and productivity, climate change, emissions trading, well being and housing affordability.
Motu was named the top climate think tank in Oceania 2015 by the International Centre for Climate goverenance. It has been named one of the top ten global economic think tanks by the Research Papers in Economics website.
Suzi Kerr is a Senior fellow at Motu and has worked on climate change since graduating from Harvard in 1995 with a Phd in Economics. She is also a member of New Zealand’s climate change commission. Note that she does not speak for the commission in this discussion.
I came to see her at Motu’s offices in Cuba Street and we tried imagining a future where emissions are finally under control.
01:34 Motu's approach and the space they occupy 03:35 The urgency graph since 1995 04:18 Acticely choosing optimism 05:40 Rapid change and Electric cars 07:20 We are small, but everywhere is small 08:14 Inducing responses from others 09:10 The high level negotiations work in the same way as the small ones 11:34 The painful formal process 12:40 The democracy you can touch 14:04 The sea change - open sourcing politics and policy 15:30 Preparing for the moment when the political and social climate is ready 17:18 Our role in the world 18:00 Its safe for you to say "I care too" 19:00 Comparing to the open source revolution 20:55 The way to shift a large complex system 22:00 What can you as part of this complex system 23:00 How could you enable EVs? 24:50 What is the one single change you want the most? 26:40 Agricultural emissions 28:30 The two basics of methane 30:45 Are we already geoengineering? 31:25 Fifty years on: the collaboration required 35:20 Fifty years on: what it will look like 38:20 Decarbonising over the last 100 years 40:10 How do you know when reductions are lucky accident 43:10 The momentum of the last four years 46:30 CNG and retrofitting cars - solutions from the sidelines 52:20 The thinking needs to pervade everything 54:15 When its not your day job 58:10 The importance of getting the right stories
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