“Our continuing uneconomic growth makes us complicit in a process that is triggering an ecological catastrophe for our children and generations beyond them. They will justifiably sit in judgment on our failure to have prevented its devastating consequences knowing that we chose to look the other way.”

Over the past 40 years, my research has been concerned with the development of public policy on the areas of transport, road safety, urban planning, energy conservation, waste avoidance, health promotion, and the environment. In recent years, I have focused in particular on the all-embracing implications of global climate change and how we can limit it.

In all my studies I have aimed to provide evidence that will aid the process of policy reform. I have repeatedly highlighted the inadequacy of attention paid to social and environmental issues, to intra- and inter-generational equity, and to the rights of those groups in the population with little, if any, public voice. A common theme has been the failure of successive governments to adopt policies that will compensate for the fact that few personal and business decisions are influenced by consideration of their wide impacts on society and the environment. Progress is further hindered by the unwillingness of politicians and their advisers to acknowledge the significance of any new evidence that challenges the status quo in conventional thinking and practice.