Yesterday I wrote about Ross Garnaut’s briefing at the Adelaide town hall – on the economic effects of climate change - and why this should be front page news in the Murdoch press today.
Well the local version of the Murdoch press is colloquially known as “The Daily Shopper” – its banner name is “The Advertiser”. I imagine you can guess what its prime focus is.
Anyway, the front page today is dedicated to that great intellectual pursuit - “Football” and a beatup about vehicle manufacturing. The Garnaut story is buried on page 8 – well hidden as a subset of a bigger story on the G8 meeting. Not only is it well disguised but it somehow doesn’t get around to mentioning the “risks” to South Australia that were a feature of the Garnaut briefing.
I suppose that if your primary business is selling advertising space to local retailers then the last thing you would want to do is “scare the horses”. But then I wonder who is responsible for informing the local community - if not the local newspaper?
This all reminds me of Lee Iacocca’s 9 commandments of leadership – one of which is:
“Leaders have to COMMUNICATE. I’m not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I’m talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don’t know if it’s denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it’s painful.”
Exactly.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
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*.
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*.
Friday, July 4, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, June 20, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
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?
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?
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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.
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.
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