Garnaut says that South Australia is more exposed to climate change than any state

I went to Ross Garnaut’s briefing this morning in the Adelaide Town Hall and I am glad that I did.

Not just to hear about the work that his team have done on the economic effects of climate change but also to witness the strong support that he has across the South Australian community. That was impressive.

There were a lot of people there – the entire top and bottom sections of the main hall were full and not just with young people, there were a lot of old people – all interested in what he had to say.

And what he had to say isn’t pretty. The main theme for South Australia is that this State is more exposed than any in the nation and Australia as a country is more exposed than any other developed nation.

Now that should be front page news in the Murdoch press tomorrow and the lead story on commercial television tonight – we shall see.

The full impact on South Australia is not yet known because the modeling isn’t yet complete but the situation is dire because;

As Ross Garnaut said: "By 2050, unmitigated climate change on middle of the road outcomes would mean major declines in agricultural production across much of the country, including a 50 per cent reduction in irrigated agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin. By 2100, irrigated agriculture in the Murray Darling Basin would decline by 92 per cent."

The South Australian economy is very dependent on agriculture and this is the "middle of the road scenario". The worst case scenario is not yet fully understood but it will mean that even larger areas of the State become uninhabitable!

And yes, there were the usual claque of naysayers, deniers and nutcases present – mostly asking irrelevant questions and/or making ridiculous statements. Sometimes I wonder if they actually understand anything about the subject. But clearly Ross had heard the dumb questions before and managed to answer them with dignity and clarity. I imagine that it must become very tedious having to respond to these people each time he gets up to present some important work.

The good news is that his work is leading to a thorough understanding of the problem and that should lead us to a range of options for mitigation – we all need to get involved and ensure that our politicians follow through with real *action*.

The world is changing – we need to be aware

The world is definitely changing – and at an increasingly fast pace.

Those amongst us who are either in denial or who resist informing themselves about this change and/or the pace of it - risk becoming further alienated at serious personal cost.

One small example is around what is happening in the USA with transport fuel costs.

This is the place that has had some of the lowest transport fuel costs of any major country over an extended period - and who have become so profligate that they think their SUV’s are somehow appropriate transport – and that they all have a god-given entitlement to cheap fuel!

Well lordy - many of them have had a huge wake-up call with increasing “gas” prices and they are now concerned because their little Iraq adventure and experiment was designed to “protect” the American way of life from the “realities” of the world.

In particular, it was supposed to ensure their control of a large slice of the world’s oil reserves - so the good ole boys could continue to drive their F350’s and Hummers – while giving the rest of us the “bird”.

Well guys, your devious little plan seems not to have worked as expected.

Aside from demonstrating the extent of your diplomatic and military competence, the other thing that your little adventure has done is that it has probably contributed to the establishment of speculators who know how to drive the oil price higher each day – thus delivering real pain to American and other profligate oil consumers. Some might consider it unkind to suggest that Bush and Cheney have managed to achieve what Bin-Laden failed to do.

Anyway, now many American citizens are desperately trying to catch up with the realities of an “oil constrained” world. Some are even investing in bikes and learning how to ride them – it must be hilarious to see those good ole boys jump on the treadley and head down to the mall for their morning maccas.

Small minds – and small minded scams

Is it any wonder that the people of South Australia distrust their government when they try on scams like the one that I witnessed today.

First a bit of background – one of the main roads leading out of the city of Adelaide toward the south is Goodwood Road. Over recent months there has been quite a bit of building activity along here - as the buildings are refreshed around the showgrounds.

A number of new buildings are being erected and “the government” in it’s wisdom has changed the traffic management arrangements along Goodwood Road – there are lots of temporary changes in place – it varies from day to day – but basically, the speed limits have been reduced and traffic is regularly disrupted during the course of the day as trucks and deliveries come and go to the work site. It’s a bit of a shambles really – as anyone traveling along there will know. A typical state government project.

Which is all very well – except the police have set-up a speed trap with a patrol car - using a speed camera to catch people who are exceeding the arbitrary “construction speed” limit.

Not a problem really – except the arbitrary signposting and speed notification is extremely poor quality and unreliable – it gets changed regularly and that’s exactly what happened today.

The worker who had responsibility for setting up and managing the limits and process today obviously had a hangover – because the world (OK – the local traffic) was moving faster than he could cope with.

And the speed camera cop was having a field day – catching those poor souls who dared to exceed the arbitrary “construction speed” limit. He might even have made enough to retire – given the amount of tickets that were written.

Anyway, this just highlights what is going on in South Australia. It’s a sad situation when the police need to set-up speed camera traps – and rely on construction work to make them effective from a revenue perspective.

And so the question is – “what is the construction speed” along Goodwood Road? I’m glad you asked – because I don’t know and neither does the person who is responsible for the signposting – because it varies between 25, 40 and 60 kilometers an hour – all depending on the time of day and the location - and probably also the phase of the moon and the size and location of a rat’s rectum.

But I guess that doesn’t matter when the objective is to scam some revenue.

Lets all sit around and wait – for something

I wonder how many times the reality of South Australia’s prospects need to be raised before Mr Rann and his colleagues start to pay attention, listen, understand and actually do something?

Last night at a conference in Adelaide, Mr Phil Ruthven – the IBISworld executive chairman - said South Australia is in danger of developing a “cargo cult mentality” by waiting on the much hyped mining boom to arrive.

Of course this is the very same mining boom that Mr Rann and his colleagues and the Murdoch press have been talking up for years now and which still seems as far away as ever.

The reality is that mining does not employ many people – the Australian average is around 1% of the workforce – in the South Australian context that is about 5500 people. And the latest Bureau of Statistics data shows that since 2002 the mining workforce has actually been reducing in South Australia! The South Australian Government’s own economic forecasters show that employment will peak in 2011-12 at around 8900 jobs! The truth is that mining alone won’t create the necessary jobs to support the place.

Clearly mining is not something that our state government should be “betting the future of the state on”.

The two questions that spring to mind are – “Why are they?” and “What’s the alternative?”

The answer to “Why are they?” is that unfortunately - in South Australia - we have a history of government and political leadership that is incapable of marshalling the intellectual resources needed to develop a big-picture long-term plan - to sell it to the people and to then execute against it.

There has also been a historical failure of many previous South Australian politicians and their bureaucrats – we all saw the debacle of the Liberal's Brown and Olsen attempt to recreate Silicon Village in Adelaide.

While that’s the subject of another article, it is a good example of leadership failure – and we should try to learn from it. It seems to me that the people who want to become state politicians are not the same people we need to build and develop the place.

Do we need a smarter political selection process? Absolutely.

As to “What’s the alternative?” that’s also not easy – and I don’t have immediate answers – but there is a well understood process that the state should be going through to understand and develop its options.

This is called Strategic Planning – and is a rigorous and robust process that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the place and attempts to find the best mix of opportunities that the state should be investing in and encouraging. This is more of a process than an outcome - because it's the activity of the process that creates the learning and knowledge.

But when I talk to people about Strategic Planning – in most cases their eyes glaze over and they want to move the conversation to football. That’s the real problem.

Green Information Technology Services

I recently asked my network group at LinkedIn to give me some guidance and advice on how to develop a set of “green” information technology based services for clients.

Here are five of the responses that I thought were rather interesting and worth exploring in depth.

1. NeutralTech: Help large corporates develop initiatives that will reduce the carbon emissions of their technology departments. Lots of scope with this: from designing a model to actual implementation of a "turning green" project.

2. GreenSourcer: Set carbon footprint targets for technology suppliers. Design a carbon footprint measurement methodology. Set up an indexing system for preferred "green" suppliers.

3. SustainabilITy: Most large corporates would already have "green-ing" programs. You can position yourself as the "expert" in utilising best of breed technology to drive these programs. So this is not so much providing "green" technology services, but providing technology services that drive the organization wide "greening" process.

4. Recycling: Help create an awareness that can be inculcated throughout industry and user base to “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” thereby hiving off systems that have outlived their particular ‘standard’ can be repurposed, reorganized / reprogrammed to enable usage in various charities, NGO or non critical usages. Recycling computing equipment otherwise can keep harmful materials such as lead, mercury, and hexavalent chromium out of landfills and dumping yards where the risk of seepage / leakage to external environment remains high.

5. Working from Home / Telecommuting: Promote the principle and practice of telecommuting Teleconferencing and telepresence technologies that are often implemented in green computing initiatives. With many advantages like increased worker satisfaction, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to travel, and increased profit margins as a result of lower overhead costs for office space, heat, lighting, etc. savings are significant. I know that the Voice over IP (VoIP) reduces the telephony wiring infrastructure by sharing the existing Ethernet copper (a toxic metal) and is another efficient way to optimize the usage and adds up one more advantage to the ‘green IT’ arena.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Nepotism is alive and well – perhaps even flourishing in the town where I live

I thought that nepotism was something that had died a natural death – with the need for increased corporate governance in the 21st century and the corresponding need for transparency within and between organizations – I didn’t imagine that it could exist in any substantial or obvious way in 2008.

With all the statutory and regulatory and reporting requirements and the fact that boards now have a much more detailed and enhanced responsibility to their shareholders, I thought that patent and obvious nepotism would be shunted out the door with all those other corporate antiquities of the previous century.

Nope - perhaps I was naive enough to think that corporate boards are actually interested in transparency and openness. The ones’ that I am talking about are willfully blind to bad behavior – probably because they have their collective fingers buried deep in the pie.

The way to fix this problem is clearly not with regulation or legislation. The way to fix this problem is by encouraging whistleblowers and protecting them when they do.

But I don’t expect it to happen in my lifetime.

Spin City in the South

I sometimes despair at what is happening across Adelaide and South Australia - or more correctly what is not happening.

The place is locked in a time warp – it’s the 1950’s all over again – but this time it is run by a *spin meister* who is more concerned with retaining power than with fixing the substantial problems of the place.

It doesn’t matter how hard or how often the Premier and his PR army try to talk the place up – the people are finally waking up, peering out from under their mushrooms and asking the tough questions.

Which is all rather unusual – South Australians have a reputation for not questioning authority. I think it stems from the fear and control that has been wielded by government and business over many decades in a town where jobs are hard to find and easy to lose. It’s much safer to keep your head down. Those who speak out have traditionally been punished – often losing their jobs or being bypassed for promotion or even blacklisted. I have some personal experience of this. To an outside observer, it seems the government thinks it is much easier to sweep things under the carpet rather than deal with reality. This might also explain why the Premier is so opposed to an independent commission against corruption.

And of course this is all aided and abetted by a local media that can best be described as mediocre. Actually, David Salter in his recent book “The Media We Deserve” can articulate it much better than I can – the subtitle is “Underachievement in the Fourth Estate” – it’s well worth a look. You probably won’t find it advertised in the Murdoch press though.

Which is why it’s interesting to note that the people of Adelaide are starting to get angry and some are even revolting. Just goes to show that when the primary tool of government is media manipulation and spin and nothing of substance comes out the other end then the community patience starts to wear a bit thin.

That’s the problem – despite the big words and the grand plans and the supersized headlines, nothing of substance ever happens here. And that’s pretty much how the *spin meister* likes it because if you do something then you might upset someone – and upset people usually vote for oppositions.

The issue of the moment is transport – I have written about this previously. Perhaps the people of Adelaide have reached their *pain threshold* and have decided that it is time to make some noise because the government and the transport minister don't seem to react until they get their names in lights.

That noise is only going to get louder while the focus remains on spin and not substance.