thames estuary

'No Boris Island' demo this Friday

By Joe on 08/05/2012
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There is a demo planned this Friday outside City Hall from 9.30am to protest Boris Johnson's silly airport idea.

Boris Johnson’s plans for an airport in the Thames Estuary spell disaster for our climate. 150 million passengers per year would use the airport, increasing our emissions at alarming rate - we are struggling as it is to meet the weak climate target of reducing our emissions by 80% by 2050, the introduction of new airport will only further hinder our attempts to achieve it.

As if the climate implications are not enough the location of his proposed airport and its cost, £50 billion, are mind boggling. The location would mean the disruption of a fragile ecosystem, that exists in the estuary, including endangering protected species of birds. As well as being in the heart of the convergence of four existing major flight paths used for arrivals and departures, leading to even more congestion in the skies and higher CO2 emissions as planes spend more time circling in the air waiting to land.

Also the proposed site is very near to the sunken SS Richard Montgomery, a munitions ship which contains enough unexploded material to send a metre-high tidal wave hurtling towards the banks of the River Thames.

We cannot allow Boris to proceed with this hugely damaging vanity project - the cost of Boris Island is just too great.

So come and join us to tell the newly re-elected mayor that just because he’s back in office does not mean we’ll let him slip this past us!

Speakers are to be confirmed and will be listed at http://on.fb.me/KIb1eV in the near future.

This event is supported by: No Estuary Airport, AirportWatch, and Campaign against Climate Change.

Contact number & E-mail: 07580 414 173, no.boris.island@gmail.com

Boris’s idea will never fly

By Joe on 20/01/2012
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Wednesdays announcement that the government will consider building a new airport in the Thames Estuary, dubbed 'Boris Island' sparked a long day of media hysteria.

Boris Johnson's voice echoed out over our TVs, Radios and newspapers the next day and Plane Stupid came under pressure to get a representative to appear on Sky News and Newsnight in response. 

We are totally baffled by it all. 'Boris Island' airport is to be built on an artificial island and would result in 150 million more passengers a year which is serious bad news for the climate. We can't allow airport expansion on this scale and meet our climate change reduction targets at the same time – the two government policies are mutually incompatible and cannot both succeed.

The other little problem is the fact that the Thames Estuary is basically a bird sanctuary. Birds and planes don't match – simple as that.

Here are some other useful facts that need to be included in the debate:

  • The UK fly on average twice as much than any other country in the world already.
  • The most popular destination out of Heathrow is Paris and 3rd is Manchester. If we reduced these unnecessary flights there would be plenty of capacity at Heathrow Airport  
  • Aviation is the fasting growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • If aviation grows at its projected annual rates then aviation will take up 100% or more of our national carbon budget some time between 2030 and 2050.
  • Between Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, London City and Luton; London already has 6 runways and 10 terminals.

Only Boris could come up with an idea as daft as this, building an airport in a tidal estuary when we are facing a future of rising sea levels due in part to emissions from aviation.

For now we will just be keeping a close eye on it but if given the go ahead the Thames Estuary Airport could represent an activists dream. Building an airport on an artificial island is such an enormous logistical project that it would be child's play to disrupt it!

Boris's nonsense island airport

By Joe on 22/11/2011
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We don't need any more airports! In truth, more airport expansion would be a disaster. We cannot expand our airports and reach our climate change reduction targets at the same time – this is a fact that we have been shouting off roofs, on runways etc for years. But Boris Johnson just doesn't seem to get it.

On Monday 22nd November, Boris issued a report which said building a new airport in the Thames Estuary, 'dubbed Boris Island', would allow Britain to tap into billions of pounds of foreign investment and would provide more airport capacity. However campaigners are challenging these statistics. AirportWatch, the umbrella organisation representing aviation campaigning groups, has produced figures which show that London already has a greater number of flights to the world’s main business destinations than any of its European rivals. In total, London’s airports have over 1000 departure flights each week to the key business destinations compared with Paris’s 499, Frankfurt’s 443, and Amsterdam’s 282. The full figures are published HERE.

What is even more concerning is that Boris has refused to even acknowledge the threat of climate change. The Heathrow 3rd runway plans were partly grounded because of climate change arguments so when Boris doesn't even mention climate change you have to start worrying. The reality remains that if the aviation industry were to keep to their promises to get its emissions down to 2000 levels, they will not need any extra runways at all as they would have to cut flying by 35%.

In terms of location there is also the small issue of the Liquefied Natural Gas facility which lies in the way. The Isle of Grain, where Boris wants to build his silly airport, is home to one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas terminals, which sees a fifth of the UK’s gas supply offloaded by container ships and stored there. Lethal liquid gas for the area comes via the container port at the Isle of Grain which surely rules out these bizarre airport plans in the first place.

Boris Island is now right up there on our radar and Plane Stupid will be keeping an eye out for any new developments to the story. Kent County Council and Medway Council, along with the RSPB, will all fight the scheme. You can add Plane Stupid to that list too.