[LINK] Australian Government Carbon Target Too Low

[Tom Worthington]

The Australian Government released its Carbon Pollution Reduction 
Scheme White Paper today (15 December 2008): 
<http://www.climatechange.gov.au/whitepaper/>. Buried down in the 
detail is a CO2 reduction target of only 5 to 15 per cent below 2000 
levels by the end 2020. This is much less than the 25% needed to 
address climate change and is not an acceptable target, in my view.

Use of the Internet is integral to the trading scheme proposed by the 
government (with "the Internet"  and a "dynamic web interface" 
mentioned in the body of the report. But I could find no mention of 
how ICT could be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A reduction 
of 15% could be made just through Green ICT initiatives alone, using 
the techniques I will be teaching, in the ACS course starting 18 
January 2009 
<http://www.acs.org.au/cpeprogram/index.cfm?action=show&conID=greenict>. 
This is without the need to make major changes to industry or lifestyle.

The summary of the report is provided as a well formatted HTML page. 
The detailed content of the report is in PDF and Ms-word. The Ms-Word 
version seems superfluous and a HTML version of the report would be 
far more useful (as was done with the Garnaut Climate Change Review 
Final Report). There is some odd wording which says that "The PDF 
version is the only legal version of the print version.". This may 
make some sense to a lawyer, but not to anyone else. In contrast to 
this the actual content of the report is very readable. For quick 
links to the material see my blog: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/12/australian-government-carbon-pollution.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University