Manchester airport: emissions cleared for take-off

By Robbie on 05/02/2009
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Manchester airport take off

Manchester City Council announced their 'Call to Action' on climate change last month, which plans to reduce the City's emissions by one third by 2020. "Great!" we thought: the Council owns 55% of Manchester Airport Group (MAG), so surely this call to action would see the Airport's emissions reduce as well?

Alas no: the Council simply washed their hands of this issue. Council Chair, Sir Richard Leese thinks they can't constrain the Airport and is using that old excuse that if the planes didn't fly out from Manchester then they would just fly from somewhere else. That two of MAG's directors, Brian Harrison and Lord Peter Smith are on the Council can't have influenced his decision, right?

The Council Executive are going for a green airport; this oxymoron involves letting the airport grow as big as it likes while talking a lot about it becoming carbon neutral. Unfortunately this carbon neutrality won't include emissions from planes, but will cover magic lightbulbs in the toilets. It's clear that finding credibility in Manchester's climate change plans is like attempting to nail jelly to a wall - the harder you try, the more it falls apart.

Support for taxes on flights keeps growing

By Anonymous on 03/02/2009
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Air ship

It finally seems like we might just be getting through to people - maybe even the hard-working British families the aviation industry likes to blame for their plans to turn Britain into Airstrip One. According to the 25th British Social Attitudes Report, 70% of Brits now agree "that air travel has a serious effect on climate change." This may not strike readers of our website as an especially mind-blowing revelation - but it's worth remembering that only 83% of Brits currently agree that bears shit in the woods.

Of perhaps greater significance is the news that "The proportion who agree that people should be able to travel by plane 'as much as they like' is 63%, down from 78% in 2003. When asked the same question but with the extra words 'even if it harms the environment', agreement falls from 63% to 19%."

Revealed: the truth behind Tory support for South-East airport expansion

By Richard on 02/02/2009
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Snow

Last week Tory Transport supremo Theresa Villiers admitted in the third runway debate that a Conservative government would not rule out airport expansion in the South-East. This rightly confused many people: if there is no case for expanding Heathrow or Stansted, then where do the Tories want to expand? And why, if they are persuaded that climate change = bad, do they want to expand any at all?

I've been puzzling over this for several days now. If airport expansion leads to more CO2, and CO2 causes climate change, and climate change is bad news bears, then why support expansion? Then I had one of those lightbulb moments. I looked out the window and the answer lay in front of me: several feet of it, in fact. The Conservatives are supporting airport expansion because it's snowing.

Clearly all this snow could only mean that global warming was a myth; I mean, how can the world be getting warmer when for one or two days in winter we have a couple of inches of snowfall? Those crafty Tories must have checked the weather forecasts and worked it out in advance of the vote! Suddenly opposing Heathrow (where the votes are) and supporting airport expansion (because climate change is a conspiracy or whatever) makes perfect sense.

Trump's golf course fuels airport expansion

By Anonymous on 02/02/2009
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Donald Trump

Donald Trump, the American tycoon behind the theme-park golf course set to trash the beautiful Aberdeenshire coast, has been linked to plans to expand Aberdeen airport. Not content with making a mockery of the Scottish government by ignoring local decision makers (not to mention 9 of the holes being built on a Site of Special Scientific Interest) Trump has been a driving force behind aviation expansion. The destruction of the largest and most superlative dynamic dune system in North-west Europe appears to not even register when a back-hander from a rich American is in the equation.

Trump’s golf course is aimed at rich foreign tourists; he plans to keep them on site as much as possible, minimising any economic gains for the local community. Obviously wealthy tourists will be flying in, and Donald has also planned helicopter rides from the airport to the resort! Aberdeen airport has been using his golf course to justify expansion. It's plans to support almost 6 million passengers by 2030 are yet another blow to the 'groundbreaking' climate bill.

The resort has already been criticised by Architecture and Design Scotland as destroying a very sensitive area and devaluing Scottish architectural tradition with mock Victorian construction, so the extra airport capacity is just a small part of the problem. Hollyrood is trying to trick us, showing artificial financial input with one hand, whilst hiding the real cost with the other. This golf course will bring nothing but irreversible environmental degradation on a local and global level. Do they really think that we are that blind?

Suffrajets lock on as Labour scrapes to victory

By Richard on 29/01/2009
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Suffrajets at Parliament

After a bruising 6 and a half hour debate, in which we learnt that Hoon has the manners of a drunken wife beater and Villiers would quite like some airport expansion in the South-East, MPs finally got off the benches and stumbled in to vote. Despite 57 Labour rebels signing an Early Day Motion opposing the third runway just 28 of them voted against it; Labour scraped through by just 19 votes.

Outside the Commons a band of suffragettes chained themselves to the railings; inside many Labour rebels found new ways to justify supporting the runway. It was a pathetic display of abstention and issue-ducking. I have little faith in politicians at the best of times, but watching people who'd promised their constituents that they'd fight expansion either avoid voting or siding with the bullying Hoon is surely a new low.

Scottish Government's stupidity goes intergalactic

By Michael on 28/01/2009
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Space ship

The Scottish National Party has recently called for an RAF airbase in Moray to become the UK's first commercial spaceport. Put all those Star Trek fantasies out of your mind: once you take into account the impact of running a space station the eco-impacts go into orbit. Will Whitethorn, President of Virgin Intergalactic, described the total environmental cost per launch of your average NASA rocket as the same as that of New York over a weekend.

NASA launches space shuttles twice a year; Virgin wants to have 2 flights per day. Space travel is not covered in the climate change act, so the Government is just pretending the emissions don't exist. They must want to turn Scotland into a playground for international jetsetters. Flights on one of the shuttles will cost somewhere in the region of £150,000, far beyond the reach of most Scottish citizens.

Politicians are living on another planet if they think that they can cop out of our commitment to deal with climate change. Going over our carbon budget will have a devestating impact on our citizens. The problem is that they get caught up in these mad schemes for super golf courses and magic spaceports. Perhaps they are betting that when climate change kicks in they'll have a seat on one of Virgin's rockets out of here.