Mel Coath - our Senior Climate Change Policy Officer has been looking at the long list of airport proposals published today - here's her initial thoughts.
Today, the Airports Commission made public the fifty or so proposals on the future of airports in the UK that it has received.
The Commission, set up to advise Government on how to tackle aviation expansion in the UK, now has the unenviable task of sifting through these and producing a short list for potential expansion – the list is due by December.
With all the proposals for new or expanded airports flying about, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the climate impacts of aviation expansion were being forgotten. So it was refreshing to hear Sir Howard Davies (who heads the Commission) on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning taking a rational view.
He highlighted that we can’t have limitless airport growth and at the same time carry on cutting the UK’s green house gas emissions; the two are just not compatible. If aviation growth is uncontrolled, the rest of the economy would have to reduce emissions to zero.
Expansion of aviation capacity anywhere will have an impact on our climate – but the implication of each proposal will matter to the areas affected. Here at the RSPB we’ll be scrutinising them carefully in relation to their impact on the natural world. This isn’t new us – some of the proposals are re-workings of rejected options stretching back for decades. It’s astonishing, really, that proposals for an airport in the Thames estuary still surface, the combination of massive damage to our coastal environment and it’s wildlife, the hazards of birdstrike, the dislocation of local communities are extreme, yet the option is still on the long list.
It’s time to call a halt to recognise that serial rejection of an Thames airport is telling us that it is time, finally to agree that there should be no estuary airport.