The video of children captures just how we feel, living here in the Heathrow area.

A wider audience might like to bear these points in mind:

   
• The Public Consultation on Department for Transport (DfT) proposals for `Adding capacity at Heathrow airport` ends tomorrow, Wednesday February 27, 2008, in London.

   
• Heathrow is on the front line in the battle against climate change.  We have to draw a line in the sand now.  Unsustainable expansion with rapidly increasing emissions will continue relentlessly if we do not put a stop to this now!

   
• The deadline for responses to the Public Consultation is tomorrow, but this is not the end.  Rather, it marks the beginning of a long struggle, and local groups with all-party support from local MPs, borough councils, all four candidates for Mayor of London, and MEPs are committed to working with residents to challenge these proposals every step of the way, taking this issue of expansion to the highest levels necessary to prevent it coming to fruition.

   
• The consultation has been designed to prevent objections on issues of global concern, such as climate change.  Heathrow expansion will enable an estimated additional 3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.  The British Government intends to address the extra climate change impacts of these extra aviation emissions through international trading schemes, such as the EU ETS.

   
• To respond to the Public Consultation, email your concerns to: heathrowconsultation@dft.gsi.gov.uk

More details on the approach are on the DfT Transport Strategy and Planning webpage, which leads with a document titled 'Towards a Sustainable Transport System: Supporting Economic Growth in a Low Carbon World'.  You only need to search on 'aviation emissions' and read the surrounding paragraph on each search result to see what they are up to.

This Transport Strategy is incompatible with Britain's Climate Change Bill.  The policies cannot coexist.  At every step, one policy framework will override the other.  Recognising the weakness (and silence) of DEFRA on Heathrow expansion versus the strength of DfT combined with lobbies for the aviation and construction industries, it is not hard to see which government department will win the policy conflict in practice.

Opposition to Heathrow expansion is a test case seeking to challenge and change the underlying assumptions, implications and consequences of continuing with business-as-usual.

While I'm here, there's another annual figure to bear in mind ...

The UK aviation industry currently benefits from Government subsidies in the form of tax breaks on fuel and VAT to the tune of around 9 billion GBP per annum.

As it stands, it is very difficult under international law to add carbon taxes to fuel or oblige airlines to purchase credits through a cap-and-trade scheme.

a sibilant intake of breath

Having said this, I might also add that I most short and middle range air transportation to go away during the next 40 years.  This will happen despite Greenpeace's exhabitionism, not because of it.  

Charles Barton

Search on Grist for Heathrow and you will find the airport has not been mentioned since August 2007, when the Climate Camp was in progress.  The current consultation on expansion was initiated in November 2007, yet not a peep was heard here, nor many peeps elsewhere outside Britain.  Airport expansion is a major story, especially when the government sanctioning it purports to be the world leader on action to combat climate change, with the world's first Climate Change Bill.

Greenpeace are effective in bringing stories to a wider public, such as here at Gristmill, and for that, I thank them.

But wait...Richard Branson makes his money from airplanes that pollute the earth.

Wait...but he creates space planes.

But wait...he savages island paradises for his exclusive use.

Wait...he propounds biofuels.

But wait...biofuels are declared harmful.

But wait...Branson is the first to use biofuels in airplanes (which still pollute the earth)...but the fuels are coconut oil..which we don't know the effect of!

But wait...he says he will move Virgin world headquarters from London if they don't build a third runway.

But wait...Greenpeace protests the third runway.

But wait, maybe they won't build the runway just to get rid of him...so he's actually helping Greenpeace and the earth by making them not build the third runway but he'll continue to fly his planes that pollute, but on coconut oil which will fly him and his 20 year old wide eyed eco-enraptured coeds to island virgin paradises that he'll ravage (the islands...or the coeds...or both).

Wait...

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

I actually found myself agreeing with both Charles Barton and inel. I completely agree that a lot of Greenpeace's self-righteous posturing and obsession with getting into the news can be irritating and in many cases has little effect. In fact, ideally, Greenpeace would be an irrelevance.

On the other hand, if Greenpeace's actions are the only way of getting controversial topics like Heathrow's new runway into the news, I'm all for them. Yes, they're publicity stunts, but some of these cases could do with some publicity. And in some instances, like with the recent Japanese whaling incident, at least Greenpeace eschews the violence option.

If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?

Plus, this way they get alot more than just local publicity.  I've been followin' the story of the possible third runway for some time now, but I doubt most other people outside of the London area even knew of the proposed project until Greenpeace was put in all the international headlines.

Let's face it, if ya want to save the environment, ya need publicity.  All of the big energy and transportation and mining and agricultural (etc.) interests are gonna have huge coffers and huge lobbyists and huge PR departments behind the causes, so we need some attention-grabbers of our own if we really want to draw attention to our POV and help educate people as to our cause.