Green groups up the ante against Ryanair - 15th September 2006
Green campaigners opposed to the unsustainable growth in air travel will tomorrow publish another newspaper advertisement attacking the attitude of Michael O’Leary and Ryanair towards climate change.
Aviation is the fastest growing cause of global warming and a Sun poll this week revealed 63% of the public would give up one foreign holiday a year to help save the planet. (1)
The advert placed by Plane Stupid (2) and a number of other leading environment groups (3) will tomorrow appear in The News of the World. A similar ad appeared last week in The Mirror. A spoof of the official advertising campaign from Ryanair which pictures Winston Churchill saying, “Let’s beat terrorism. Keep Britain Flying”, the green campaigners’ advert also pictures Churchill and says, “Let’s beat the climate to death. Book Ryanair today to ensure a real climate disaster.”
Campaigner for Plane Stupid, Joss Garman, said:
"The majority of Britons will now sacrifice foreign holidays to help stop climate change. Whilst the public is waking up to the necessary changes we all have to make, the government and the industry is blindly steam rolling ahead with its plans to get more of us into the air."
He added, "Once again, it’s the ordinary people who are rising to the challenge whilst fat cat Michael O’Leary looks down from his Ivory Tower and raises two fingers up to the world.”
In a keynote address to the World Low Cost Airlines Congress in London, Easyjet CEO, Andrew Harrison, acknowledged feeling the heat from a “well organised” and “well funded” environmental lobby that is targeting cheap air travel as a major contributor to pollution and global warming. He warned short haul air travel faces a "serious threat" from "daft green taxes" imposed by “knee-jerk politicians."
Notes to editors
- http://www.communicateresearch.com/poll.php?id=85 (page 23)
- Plane Stupid is Britain’s first national direct action group against the growth in aviation
- The other green groups who placed the advert are: Greenpeace, Transport 2000, Enoughsenough.org and Green Skies Alliance.
