Heard about Nantes International Airport? You will if the Mayor of Nantes get’s his way. Forget the fact that the existing airport only operates at 30% capacity. Forget that Charles de Gaulle can be reached in a couple of hours on the TGV train. Forget that oil prices are rising and passenger demand is falling. What you must remember is that the Mayor of Nantes has one, big, enormous ego. That ego demands an international airport.
And, of course, forget that the new 2 runway airport and the proposed 4 lane highway would destroy swathes of beautiful countryside where lots of smallholders in their farmsteads are living sustainable lifestyles. Nowhere is the clash between sustainable living and a grossly unsustainable way of travelling more stark than in this battle between these rural people and the forces behind the plans to build the airport.
Plane Stupid was invited to speak at a big rally the protestors held towards the end of June. We met people determined to win by whatever means possible. They told us what the struggle means to them, in no uncertain terms:
“We know that this fight will be long and difficult. That’s why we are launching an appeal to all of France, to all of United Kingdom, and to the whole of Europe. We must support the movement against the airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, with all our force, and with means rarely used on the scale that we envisage; occupation of the site, civil disobedience, total and definitive refusal.”
The campaigners have already made common cause with a number of the radical movements in France. And they know they are part of the bigger battle against climate change:
“The world is sliding towards a frightening climate crisis, but our politicians continue to speak a dead language. People who defend the project of an airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes are imagining the future with words from a past which will never exist again. They are the heirs of those who stood behind the Maginot line waiting for the German army only to be submerged by General Guderian’s tanks in just one night in May 1940. In the same way, they are mistaken, because they take one epoch for another.
“If it weren’t so serious, we might be tempted to laugh at the promoters’ arguments concerning the new airport. Like Toinette in Molière’s play, Le Malade Imaginaire, who replies ‘the lungs’ to every question about Argan’s health, they repeat ‘growth’, ‘growth’, ‘growth’, as if hypnotised. They don’t know, because they will never know, that our planet has already reached its physical limits in most of its vital domains, one of which is transport. In a finite world, only the dangerously blind are still advocating the destruction of spaces and species.”
Nantes is a winnable battle. The Mayor with the ego can’t find the funds to build the airport. And private developers may be put off by the rising oil prices and the coming recession. But the local campaigners remain worried. They are not rich and, because the area is sparsely populated, they are not numerous. But their battle could become a cause celebre. If the philistine airport developers even threatened to smash their sustainable way of life, Plane Stupid, and many others across Europe, would be straight back on that fast train to France. Allez Nantes!
