Transport Innovation

The definate highlight of the Innovation Edge conference, hosted by NESTA at the Royal Festival Hall yesterday, was Sir Bob Geldof. The whole theme of the morning was about hearing from people who have actually changed the world. Sir Bob was preceeded by Tim Berners-Lee - who else could casually say “I invented the worldwide web because ….”.

I can’t resist a few sound-bites from Sir Bob (or George Bernard-Shaw):
- “Never under-estimate the power of unreasonable people … they have a restlessness to change the world”
- “Every idea has its time, a perfect syncronicity with their need at a moment in time”
- “Everything is running out: water, oil, time, …”; and of course:
- “Poverty is shit” .

Bob Geldof has enough on his plate with solving poverty and I was left thinking who is our champion for actually doing something about climate change and facing upto the fact that, not only is the transport sector the largest end-use category of emissions in the UK, but also it contibutes the most significant increase in our carbon foot-print year-on-year. Eddington predicts twice as many cars on our roads by 2050, Stern says that we need to reduce our carbon foot-print by 60-80%. “Do the math” as the Americans would say … How are we going to sort out this fine mess?

P.S.> I should have mentioned that the Prime Minister was there as well, so atleast there is is some top-cover for the innovation agenda in Government circles.