The link between the scientific community and journalism has always been a delicate one. Throughout my career I have been continually misquoted by the media – in particular the right wing attacks of Andrew Bolt and Piers Akerman (who seem to sacrifice journalistic integrity in favour of sensationalism and political agenda). More recently, The Australian newspaper painted the colourful headline “Barrier Reef can adapt to warmer times“, to which the lead author of the study, Dr Madeleine van Oppen later responded with: “the article in today’s Australian is a miss-representation of our work“. Along similar lines, an article in the BBC News entitled ” When science and journalism collide” is well worth a read.

Scientists, operating in a culture which places enormous importance on accuracy and precision, can find reporters’ occasional sloppiness infuriating.

Equally, journalists often find scientists unworldly in their insistence on caveats and qualifications at every turn and their use of technical language, when reporters are desperately trying to simplify complex concepts and make them accessible to a general audience.

After many years of denying that climate change was an issue or even existed, it is refreshing to see Howard and Bush finally coming to the table to discuss what will be the defining issue of this century. At last, they seem to get what people have been telling them for over a decade. Overall, however, the APEC Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development is weak and elusive of the major issues and responses that are needed.

For example, much of the text is dominated by statements that constrain the steps that we might take to combat climate change to those which do not affect trade or economic prosperity in the Asia Pacific region. Given the two often take opposing directions, this is lame. Not to say we want policies that crash our economies, but surely environmental issues as important as climate change should not always take the back seat to economics? This of course has been the career-long position of our climate-skeptic-now-supposedly-with-it Prime Minister. Of course, he is cozily embedded in the APEC love-in with his ‘aspirational’ and like-minded buddy, George Bush. Unfortunately, given the serious issues of climate change (as outlined in the recent IPCC 2007 report), rating economics over the environment trades the future for short-term gains today. This may be politically expedient for our poll-driven Prime Minister, but is not good long-term economic management.

The Australian business community understands it far more than leaders like John Howard or Peter Costello. A recent poll indicates that climate change is at the top of the list of business risks – primarily because it stands to radically amplify the uncertainty of the future and consequently escalate business risk.  Surely, APEC should have sort to balance the priorities of economics and the environment.

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