[LINK] Garnaut Climate Change Report misses role of information
Tom Worthington
Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au
Fri Jul 4 23:10:46 AEST 2008
The Garnaut Climate Change Review Draft Report, was released today at
the National Press Club. There is a Media Release with a summary
(PDF, 312kb) and the full Draft Report of 548 pages (13.5Mb of PDF):
<http://www.garnautreview.org.au/CA25734E0016A131/pages/draft-report>.
Public forums about the report will be held in Perth, Adelaide,
Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane from next week.
One of the key messages of the report is that a way must be found to
decouple economic development from fossil fuels. One of the obvious
ways to do this is with the commerce of information, not physical
goods. Unfortunately this is something Professor Garnaut has not grasped.
The report itself fails to use efficient online techniques to reduce
the environmental footprint of its distribution and allow more public
consultation. The report is formatted as relatively inefficient PDF
(about ten times larger than it need be) and so will itself
contribute to the greenhouse effect. Also the public forums are only
being held in a few locations, requiring those in outlying areas to
consume fossil fuels to attend, with no online forum.
The lack of understanding of the role of electronic communications in
sustainable development is illustrated by the notation in the PDF
version of the document, which claims that it is "... printed on
9Lives 80, a paper composed of 80 per cent post-consumer fibre and 20
per cent totally chlorine-free pulp ..." and "All inks used in the
printing of this report are vegetable based". Neither of these claims
is true, as the electronic document is composed of bits of
information, with no particular physical form. Very few of the people
reading the report will ever see one of the small number of paper
copies produced. Understanding that will be key to the solution to
climate change.
For those wanting a quick look, without having to download large PDF
documents, I have extracted the text of the media release and table
of contents of the full report:
* Media release:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/07/garnaut-climate-change-review-draft.html#release>
* Table of Contents:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/07/garnaut-climate-change-review-draft.html#contents>
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
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