In the latest guest post, Jon Fuller sets out the view from Essex where mad-cap estuary airport schemes are not new. Jon is an environmental campaigner from Southend and sets the latest plans for the Thames in a wider context.
When London Mayor Boris Johnson first suggested an estuary airport, I dismissed the idea as fantasy. I remembered the Maplin Sands episode over 40 years ago and concluded I could safely ignore the Boris Island threat.
Coming from the background of an environmental campaigner I was more worried by the failure to constrain aviation generally and the damage the various greenhouse gases were doing to climate. So I focussed my attention upon campaigning against aviation expansion at Heathrow and Stansted and helped to form a resident’s action group against expansion at London Southend Airport, where I live.
South Esses marshes looking towards Southend - bird's eye view from a powered glider. Photo Rolf Williams RSPBImages
I keep abreast of scientific developments and so find the mismatch between political economics and the science of climate change incomprehensible. I am deeply shocked, appalled and genuinely furious that politicians and big business should continue to pursue growth in environmentally damaging activities like aviation at a time when science warns of impending catastrophic climate change. Indeed the scientific community has recently gone further, warning that the various geo-engineering options may not work. For many years items like this article from the BBC ought to have jolted the public, politicians and business into a new mind set. Far from pursuing environmentally sustainable solutions to our economic woes, government has announced to the world that the UK will be determined in pursuit of environmentally damaging activities like aviation, and it will seek to extract oil and gas from ever more risky areas like the deep waters to the north west of Scotland. Far from encouraging people who live here to holiday at home and improve the UK balance of trade, the PM and Chancellor have given their strongest signals yet that they are seriously considering a staggering increase in aviation by building a Thames Estuary airport. I am now more worried than ever that government will make one of its worst decisions, ignoring the ethos of evidence based policy. If it goes ahead and builds an estuary airport we must face the prospect of moving 76,000 employees from Heathrow to North Kent and South Essex, building thousands of new homes in areas at risk of flooding from sea level rise. The towns that make up the borough of Southend on Sea will face a dramatic decline in tourism and the value of property. Currently property developers and the council enjoy a very healthy return from the grandiose flats that are springing up along the seafront. People are willing to pay many hundreds of thousand or millions of pounds for the sea views from those luxurious apartments; but none of them would pay that sort of money with a view equivalent to that of a Heathrow. And how many day trippers would want to come to a seaside town dominated by the utter misery associated with a hub airport? Little wonder then that politicians of all parties in South Essex are united on this issue like no other. When I was interviewed by the BBC for the Sunday Politics Show and have commented in the local press, I’ve talked about the impact of an estuary airport upon wildlife. But I would argue that we now need to take the economic arguments to Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron, making it clear that the aviation tourism deficit is hitting the UK hard (we make a net loss of over £15billion per annum). We need to carry the argument to them that spending such a vast sum of money on an estuary airport is short-sighted and wasteful of financial resources, particularly at a time when the supply of oil has peaked and will gradually diminish.
And we need to promote an alternative economic vision that boosts UK growth by encouraging more UK nationals to holiday at home, thereby freeing up space for long haul business trips that may only be required in large numbers for a few more years. Government must be encouraged to see that, with the pace and quality of broadband tele-conferencing improving so rapidly, there must be a very real chance that demand for long haul flights to the far east may stall then decline in the years to come. To waste our national effort on an estuary airport could turn out to be the greatest economic folly in history.
We’ll have more contributions from around the estuary as the aviation consultation unfolds over the spring and summer. Jon and I would be interested in your views.
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