William (Bill) Hemmings is an independent consultant, now based in Brussels, specializing in regulatory policy analysis to address the environmental and climate change impacts of aviation and shipping. Bill grew up in Hobart, Australia and door-knocked in 1972 for the United Tasmania Group (UTG), the world's first Green party to contest elections, in a failed attempt to stop the flooding of Lake Pedder, a unique glacial lake in southwest Tasmania, one of the world’s last expanses of temperate wilderness, a Unesco World Heritage site. The whole area is now under severe climate threat from forest fires triggered by dry lightning.
For more on ‘Restore Lake Pedder’ visit https://lakepedder.org/
Bill completed science and politics degrees at the University of Tasmania and Associate and Licentiate diplomas in piano performing, before completing a Master’s degree at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar including a strategic study of the failed policy to defend Australia, which ended in the Fall of Singapore in 1942, the largest British surrender in history. His thesis and later interest in aviation was inspired by his father’s service — 1 in 7 Australians fought overseas — including as lead navigator in the attack by two squadrons of wooden RAF Mosquito fighter bombers on the barracks at the start of the Battle of Arnhem, 5 minutes before Operation Market Garden commenced; and his mother’s service as an intelligence WAAF officer on Gen Douglas MacArthur’s personal staff at GHQ South West Pacific in Brisbane during preparations for the push north to recapture the Pacific.
Bill’s professional career spans 11 countries on 5 continents; in diplomacy for the Australian and Canadian Foreign Services, including reporting on the Central American insurgencies, at UNGA, UNOV, and the OAS; commercial airline management and HKG ASA negotiations for the Swire Group/Cathay Pacific Airways; in strategic travel management for Rosenbluth International across Europe, leading corporate travel procurement consulting at Amex EMEA; and heading up aviation and shipping at T&E in Brussels. He has two kids, born in Vienna, and now grown up.
His strategic analyses draw on practical experience and the premise that properly understanding the needed strategy today should best first consider what has come before, successful or less so. Lake Pedder, a protected national park from 1955, was flooded for hydropower — and is thus a prime example of bad environmental policy and government failure to regulate wisely.
