Meeting someone for the first time when you feel like you’ve know them for years. I had the great pleasure of spending some time at home with Tim Sullivan today and his wonderful family as they passed through on their way back to Australia.

It was impossible in the space of a couple of hours to learn fully about each other’s lives, familes, hopes and fears but we gave it a good shot. Though usually thousands of miles apart, Tim and I are connected in our shared love of the transport sector and deep sense of concern over the climate emergency.

Tim generously gifted me a copy of a book published in Australia that I’d had recommended to me – and hand delivered it. You can see me clutching it in the photo: ‘full circle – a search for the world that comes next’ by Scott Ludlam. I look forward to reading it. Here are a couple of snippets from the start of the book:

“Between 1901 and 2015, the human infrastructures of mining, farming, factories and quarries processed a staggering 3.4 trillion tonnes of raw materials in total. By the unyielding mathematics of compounding growth, in fourteen decades’ time we’re expected to churn and burn through that amount every single year.”

“The assumption that coin-doubling growth is good and necessary and normal is so mundane, so beyond question, that most days it’s all you can see through the Overton window. There do seem to be some freaks outside, banging on the glass about extinction or something, but because the window has become so firmly fixed in place it’s hard to understand what they are on about”.

And so Tim and I both oscillate between existential concerns and knuckling down to the professional work in our sector, having to cope with a deep sense of dissonance because the two don’t seem more tightly coupled together.

Tim, safe travels home and honoured to count you in my friendship group.

#climateaction

#transportplanning