Thoughts, insights and rants about futures, climate change, system change, transport, wicked problems, EDI, and heavy metal

By Professor Glenn Lyons

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  • Who cares about provenance these days? Decide and Provide

    Who cares about provenance these days? Decide and Provide

    A decade ago John Dales coined ‘Decide and Provide’ in an LTT article. Hot on the heels of that we found ourselves at the New Zealand Ministry of Transport coming up with the same term to describe a new approach to transport planning (contrasted with Predict and Provide) emerging from strategic work I’d led (https://lnkd.in/eGzvnikr). With Cody… Read more

  • Are you consciously weighing up the difference around you?

    Are you consciously weighing up the difference around you?

    Karen McShane is one of the most inspirational women I know. I am proud to know her as a friend and colleague. It therefore saddens me that she has been given an amplified sense of being othered by a recent supreme court ruling. We have been taking important steps forwards towards a more inclusive society… Read more

  • The motivations and meaning behind climate action

    The motivations and meaning behind climate action

    If you are truly prepared to open your mind and read the following account with care, attention and reflection, I believe it will pull at your heart strings and wrench at your soul. You will come to understand why ‘love and gratitude’ and ‘love and rage’ sit at the heart of Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. We… Read more

  • I asked Chat-GPT to write me a poem about road investment

    I asked Chat-GPT to write me a poem about road investment

    Is Artificial Intellgence influenced by past data? Is this going to shape our future? I asked Chat GPT to “Write me a poem about road investment”. This is what it said: The road stretches out before us,A ribbon of asphalt and dust.A path to adventure, a gateway to growth,A vital investment, worth its weight in… Read more

  • Decarbonising surface transport – probable, plausible or only possible?

    Decarbonising surface transport – probable, plausible or only possible?

    12 years ago the UK Chancellor asked Professor Julia King to “examine the vehicle and fuel technologies that, over the next 25 years, could help to decarbonise road transport, particularly cars”. Her report noted that “The global challenge is to support increases in road transport use, in a sustainable, environmentally-responsible way” [emphasis added]. It considered that… Read more

  • Jet Zero – what to make of it – is it jam tomorrow?

    Jet Zero – what to make of it – is it jam tomorrow?

    Jet Zero is the UK Government’s 2022 strategy “delivering net zero aviation by 2050”. Jet Zero is ‘a high ambition scenario’ which would ‘only’ leave 19.3 MtCO2e/year still being emitted (domestic + international) in 2050. Pre-COVID annual emissions were 38.2 MtCO2e/year. “That doesn’t seem so impressive and doesn’t sound like zero” you may be thinking.… Read more