Philippine Climate Change Act is self-defeating!

MANILA - Suddenly, the garrulous Philippine Daily Inquirer ran out of words when GMA signed the Philippine Climate Change Act (TJ Burgonio, 23 October 2009, globalnation.inquirer.net) and reported such an earth-shaking news in only 30 words:

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has signed into law the Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009 in Malacañang that would enable the country to better respond to disasters spawned by climate change.

(Never mind the split infinitive.) It looked to me like the Inquirer thought it was a waste of words to say more!

It didn't even report that it's RA 9729 for the record. That's how important climate change is to the Inquirer? It was as if to report 13 or 43 more words would be a crime. And it didn't bother to produce the body, I mean to publish the full text of the law. Well, I have it in electronic form, in case anyone from the Inquirer is interested. It's all of 4,313 words (by Word 2007 count, including 27 hyphens).

Well, I have a mouthful to say about RA 9729 myself. As a technical editor with 34 years of experience (24 years using the personal computer), I'm interested in the following 105 words:

Sec. 7. Qualifications, Tenure, Compensation of Commissioners. – The Commissioners must be Filipino citizens, residents of the Philippines, at least thirty (30) years of age at the time of appointment, with at least ten (10) years of experience on climate change and of proven honesty and integrity. The Commissioners shall be experts in climate change by virtue of their educational background, training and experience: Provided, That at least one (1) Commissioner shall be female: Provided, further, That in no case shall the Commissioners come from the same sector: Provided, finally, That in no case shall any of the Commissioners appoint representatives to act on their behalf.

With those provisions, except for honesty and integrity, nobody is qualified to become a Climate Change Commissioner at all! Not ever. Why? Because the one to be appointed should have had at least 10 years of experience on climate change - and of course, there is no one by that name. What do you mean 'experience (in) climate change' - there is no office public or private that has anything to do with climate change. Not yet, anyway. Not the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services (PAGASA), not the Department of Science and Technology (DoST), not the Department of Agriculture (DA). In fact, if you ask any knowing government unit, any educated non-government organization or scholarly individual today, it's not in any expert's terms of reference; nobody's responsible for climate change / global warming / global cooling! I wouldn't be blamed for it myself.

So, none of this: 'The Commissioners shall be experts in climate change by virtue of their educational background, training and experience.' RA 9729 must be referring to aliens from another planet who have survived their own climate change and want to teach us a lesson or two about treating our Mother Earth better, much better.

I can see that RA 9729 as worded was a case for editors who knew their stuff, who couldn't be caught with their shirts off or their pants down. I just know the editors of the law didn't do justice to this one; they were sleeping on the job. Theirs wasn't the sleep of the just.