An absolutely enormous number of people in our western societies are employed in making reports. They don't do technical things, like engineers. They don't deci

An absolutely enormous number of people in our western societies are employed in making reports. They don't do technical things, like engineers. They don't decide things, like management or politicians. They make a living by "contributing" to reports that actually do need to be written, essentially by ballooning the size and time taken to make the report. There are legitimate reasons why doers (engineers) and deciders (mgt, govt) need reports, but like advertising there's too much of it and we don't know what to cut once it's there. The reason there's these 575 page reports as mentioned in the article is that it's never enough just to say "the bird sanctuary will be harmed by this windfarm, let's think about that". You need a sweeping survey of how many birds there are, how many people visit the sanctuary, how much they spend at the shop, and so on. If you try to head this off by saying you want to just summarize it, you are the bad guy who wants to trample the rights of the kids who enjoy counting the birds. As mentioned, for large projects this naturally ends up in court as well, and that of course takes a long time. We also live in the age of PR, so it's not really in anyone's political interest to make a bunch of enemies. Even if those enemies have a relatively small claim to veto a project, it will inevitably loom large in the public debate about it. If TV news manages to find that a kid who likes the birds, they will put him on TV and you will have to find an appropriate face for the interview.