Heathrow

Plane Stupid were very disappointed to hear the announcement from Sir Howard Davies this week that the Airports Commission unanimously backs a third runway at Heathrow. 

The worst part is that Sir Howard seems to have completely fudged the climate change implications.

Here's a reminder why airport expansion is a terrible idea:

• We cannot meet our climate change targets and build new runways at the same time. It's a choice between the two. This should be very simple to understand.
• We already fly more than any other country per head.
• Nine of the ten most popular destinations out of Heathrow are short-haul including to places such as Manchester and Paris. There are already very good existing rail alternatives that we should be using instead.
• 15% of the UK population take 70% of the flights. Building new runways will only benefit rich frequent flyers who are burning the planet for unnecessary leisure flights.
• Airport expansion will have terrible implications for noise pollution and air pollution.
• Local communities face being wiped off the map entirely by a third runway at Heathrow.
• Aviation gets huge tax subsidies and pays no VAT. Why are we propping up an industry which is highly damaging to the environment at the exact time we need to be reducing our carbon emissions?
• The huge advertising budgets of the aviation industry have tricked the public into believing we face an airport capacity crisis.
• Additionally, the employment benefits of expansion have been overplayed. Claims that airport expansion will create thousands of new jobs are based on unreliable statistics. Airport expansion actually results in more UK tourists going abroad, which creates a ‘tourism deficit’.

HACAN (Heathrow Association for Control of Aircraft Noise) and Zac Goldsmith MP have announced today a new video competition against expansion of Heathrow Airport.

The project is called 'No Ifs, No Buts' in reference to David Cameron's promise before the last election to rule out expansion at Heathrow. "Yet within 30 months of taking power he set up a commission to look again at the question of a new runway" the website says. 

We like video competitions and this one has a first prize of £10,000 and celebrity judges including actor Hugh Grant. Tempted? To find out more details and to enter the competition see http://www.no-ifs-no-buts.com/ and follow @videoheathrow

Zac Goldsmith MP said:

“The competition is open to absolutely everyone, and will be judged on the night by a high profile panel, as well as the audience itself. Among the submissions, I’m looking for some really powerful messages that will be taken up on social and conventional media, and ram home the message that Heathrow expansion is not only the wrong solution for our economy, it is politically undeliverable."

He added:

“A green light for Heathrow expansion is effectively a green light for a vast, foreign-owned and taxpayer-subsidised monopoly on one edge of our great city. The Chancellor needs to stop being led by the lobby groups and think the issue through himself.”

HACAN Chair John Stewart said:

“Many people are hugely disappointed that David Cameron has gone back on his promise not to build a new runway at Heathrow. This ‘No ifs; no buts’ competition can highlight that.”

Like the steady roar of planes coming in to land over West London, the aviation industry keeps droning on about expanding London’s airports. Last week’s reshuffle shows Cameron and Osborne are listening to them too.

Justine Greening and Theresa Villiers, two Ministers with whose opposition to the third runway was well known, have found themselves shunted out of the Transport Department. A Number 10 official sniggered that Greening would "have plenty of time to think about runways as her flight to the next developing country circles the airport yet again." (Which doesn’t even make sense, because why would a plane flying to a developing country be circling at Heathrow? Unless Cameron thinks the UK is a developing country? Anyway, I digress.)

Cameron and Osborne have established an inquiry to look into “the scale and timing of any requirement for additional capacity to maintain the UK’s position as Europe’s most important aviation hub”. Lest this loaded question prove anything other than a licence to lay tarmac, they asked the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, Howard Davies, to oversee it. Davies was once a special adviser to the climate change denier Lord Lawson. He had to leave the LSE after he was busted for nodding through some chunky donations from Gaddafi’s son. Davies won’t decide to build a third runway until 2015, which means all three parties get to run on a “no third runway unless the commission tells us to build it” platform at the next election.

Residents needn’t worry though, because Boris Johnson is on the case. He’s set up a rival inquiry, proving that the invisible hand of the free market will ensure competition. The Mayor’s inquiry will report in 2013 and, like the government’s commission, will conclude that we need lots of more runway space, because that’s what it is being asked to do. Given that no one is going to build a runway in the Thames Estuary – his preferred solution – Boris gets to oppose the third runway while making it ever more likely that Sipson and Harmondsworth will be buried under tarmac.

None of this means that the third runway will be built, of course. The strongest argument against it isn’t climate change, it’s that the damned thing has no purpose. There is bags of spare capacity at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports, which is why Virgin Atlantic was able to offer new routes between London and Manchester days after losing its West Coast train franchise. Using all that spare capacity would be stupid, of course, because flying causes climate change, makes loads of noise and pollutes the air we breathe. But let’s not forget it’s there.

What’s going on behind closed doors? The government’s “sustainable aviation strategy” which was due for publication this week is delayed to the end of the summer, with no reasons given. Could it be something to do with Sir Colin Matthews from BAA and his band of environmental psychopaths bullying the government into dropping its last vestiges of being the greenest government of them all?  

BAA is throwing everything it has at the “sustainable aviation consultation” process to ensure that the result is definitely not sustainable.  

They are running an advertising campaign across London fraudulently declaring the “route to economic recovery is a flight path.” Just in case BAA doesn’t understand basic economics, our economy is in a mess because of high oil prices, bankrupt banks and rising food prices. Building new runways will not sort out the mess that we are in – it will make things far worse.  

Not content to limit itself to a fraudulent advertising campaign, BAA has got its favourite self-interested economic groups and journalists to vomit up reports on how economic growth can only happen with a third runway. Without it, they claim all business will go to Europe where every airport, runway and strip of tarmac will be expanded into an international hub. None of these pundits recognise that across Europe people have been inspired by the protests that stopped Heathrow and are organising themselves in their thousands to stop further destructive airport expansions.  

And one more thought for Sir Colin and his band of environmental psychopaths – you lost the last time and you lost everywhere. You lost in the law courts, you lost in the press, you lost public opinion and you lost at the ballot box. You lost for the simple reason that any reasonable person knows it is wrong to deliberately destroy the future through policies which knowingly worsen the already terrible plight our young people face through climate change.  

So the message to Sir Colin is this - resign. Your pursuit of a failed and immoral business strategy renders you inappropriate to run a powerful corporation. Your policy is to deliberately poison the air for the young people of today and violate their human rights.