Those worried by the current state of British politics will not be calmed by
Ruth Kelly’s decision last week on a third Heathrow runway. She let Big
Carbon walk all over her. British Airways (BA) and the British Airports
Authority (BAA) have long been among our most fearsome lobbyists. They love
Heathrow and would bulldoze Windsor Castle to help it expand. Kelly
shuddered at their advance and capitulated.
British government no longer “does” independent judgment. Its National Health
Service is in thrall to consultants, its Home Office to computer salesmen
and its Foreign Office to Americans. It refuses to lead but follows the
prevailing wind – and the money.
British airports are not, as those running them love to claim, really about
helping business but about something far less fashionable: the relatively
affluent end of the tourism market. More than 87% of the UK’s international
travellers (and 65% of London’s) are “leisure and personal”. For most people
air travel is primarily an indulgence.
There is nothing remotely amiss in this fact but it is not, as presented by
Kelly and her lobbyists, “of key importance to the local and national
economy and to our international competitiveness”. Any user of Heathrow and
Gatwick knows that these airports are overwhelmed by outgoing sun-seekers
and far fewer inbound tourists. If Heathrow were to concentrate primarily on
overseas “business” destinations, the place would be half empty.
Indeed, I could plausibly argue that, with 70% of passengers British, curbing
airport capacity would aid the economy by forcing more to holiday at home,
boosting the hotel industry and reducing the country’s heavy and burdensome
deficit on its tourism account.
In addition, every big planning decision nowadays has to address climate
change. It is impossible to set Kelly’s decision in this context.
Either she believes in global warming but has concluded there is nothing to be
done about it, or she is a flat-earther who thinks global warming is a load
of hooey. It would be a help to know which.
In either case she is aiming government policy at doomsday with all jets
burning, like the general in the film Dr Strangelove. She and Gordon Brown
cannot honestly fly the world’s conference circuit calling down damnation on
carbon criminals and then hop into bed with the hypermobility set. Under
Labour the UK’s aviation carbon emissions have risen from 4.6m tons a year
to over 18m.
Kelly has stated that she can see no argument for limiting air travel. Her
one-time transport adviser, Rod Eddington, says that “to seek artificially
to constrain the natural growth of air travel, once carbon pricing is fully
in place, would pose a significant cost to the UK economy”. But Eddington is
not a dispassionate adviser. He is the former head of BA and a relentless
campaigner for the third runway, a fact of which Kelly seems unaware.
Kelly gives no shred of evidence for the much-cited “cost” of Heathrow
overcrowding, merely a lobbyist’s assertion. London’s airport chaos has not
impeded the city’s unprecedented economic boom. Sophisticated financial
services now operate online. Certainly some businessmen must travel but air
journeys are a consequence, not a cause, of wealth. The case is grotesquely
overstated.
As for the Eddington/Kelly thesis that an expansion is climatically
“sustainable”: this is drivel. It would lead to roughly 40% more carbon
emissions. The thesis is based on airlines buying controversial carbon
certificates from other industries. In other words, their emissions are set
to rise at will, but they hope someone else’s will be cut to make up for it.
This is pure double-speak.
The pressure to expand Heathrow is chiefly a result of the success of BA and
BAA in resisting a third London airport in the Thames estuary back in the
late 1970s. When most big world cities were constructing airports and rail
links well away from their populated areas, Britain was dithering and
arguing and eventually building Stansted.
The Stansted decision, born of political cowardice, was a disaster.
Today nobody dares to expand Stansted because BA still prefers Heathrow and
because that part of Essex is peculiarly lovely and packed with marginal
voters. In other words, it suffers precisely the features that made it such
a bad location in the first place. Hapless Middlesex residents in Cranford,
Sipson and Harmondsworth were promised half a century ago “for all time”
that there would be no further growth of Heathrow to blight their homes.
Because they carry no clout, Kelly tells them to get stuffed.
Having resisted the Thames estuary, the airlines have had to induce ministers
to expand Heathrow. Millions have gone on lobbying, on lunches, dinners and
MPs’ upgrades. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown proved putty in these hands.
Stansted appears to have been forgotten and the Heathrow pledge is to be
broken.
Kelly has broken another commitment made in 2003 to keep the third runway to
2,000 metres, for short-haul domestic flights only. She is now “persuaded”
in favour of a full-load, all-screaming, all-polluting, jumbo-sized third
runway, lengthened by 300-500 metres. Its flight path will bring to Camden,
Hammersmith and Harrow the aeronautical delights now endured by Richmond and
Windsor. With a doubling of Heathrow’s throughput, the prospect is of
Armageddon along the M4 corridor as a sixth terminal sucks 25m extra car
journeys to the airport perimeter.
Since London is unlikely ever to have a government with the guts to build an
estuary airport, the one thing to be said for the Heathrow extension is that
it concentrates pain where it exists already. The chief sadness is that
another warehouse/terminal is to be erected when the about-to-be-marooned
Harmondsworth village would make a superbly kitsch “themed” terminal with
church, pub, hotel and old houses integrated into its departure area.
Harmondsworth tithe barn, Betjeman’s “cathedral of Middlesex”, would make a
fine first-class lounge.
I remain sceptical about how far humankind can influence the present global
warming, but only a fool would deny all obligation to do something to
mitigate it. Kelly is denying just that. She takes as axiomatic a doubling
in demand for air travel over the next 25 years. This is dumb planning,
reminiscent of her department’s “predict and provide” approach to
road-building in the 1970s. That was before it learnt of tolls, taxes,
licences, rationing and capacity restraints to curb traffic growth.
Kelly’s airport policy is still in the Dark Ages. She says she is in favour of
a continual increase in low-cost holiday travel and does not want to ration
it or limit slots at Heathrow to business destinations. She wants outbound
tourism to let rip. To hell with Harmondsworth and the balance of trade.
Airline travel is by no means the worst culprit on the CO2 front. Although a
jet’s carbon emissions have three times more greenhouse effect per ton than
do emissions at ground level, a full plane can be more efficient per
passenger mile than an equivalent journey in 300 half-empty cars or an empty
train. But cheap air travel remains an incentive to hypermobility.
The truth is that nobody yet knows how transport policy should respond to
global warming. The government squanders billions on near-useless wind
turbines, rendering Britain’s most beautiful places unappealing for
holidaymakers and inducing them to fly abroad. I am told the RAF does more
greenhouse damage with its jets over Wales in one day than all Wales’s wind
turbines save in a year. Yet the government will spend little on nuclear
power or rail electrification, because one is controversial and the other
costly.
Until we know what a lower-carbon transport policy might look like, we cannot
assess how government might discourage marginal air travel in favour of the
essential sort. We cannot say whether a new runway at Heathrow is really
“needed” or merely profitable. We cannot even say if the government should
look again at the Thames estuary option and give west London’s residents
some peace.
All we do know is that the government’s case for a third Heathrow runway is so
thin as to amount to a single sentence: BA wants it. Kelly, like the rest of
us, is being led by the nose by Big Carbon and all because the quality most
lacking in Brown’s government is courage.
simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk
Look, at the end of the day, if what we are doing is not climatically sustainable then let Nature take its course &, if needs be, bury us.
Ian cheese, London, UK
The "carbon emissions" thing is a scam. Global warming is a massive scare story that has to continually "pumped up" to justify the millions the so called scientists are making from it. The world may be warming, but man is not the major contributor. There is scientific evidence to support this, but the scaremongers bury it in the ever more hysterical doom predictions. It really is only about money, wise up people!
Non-believe, Devon, UK
Right on, Simon Jenkins! He has said it all, about this government's utter failure to grasp the nettle and take the bold decisions that would really help reduce carbon emissions and aircraft noise, while still allowing for a sensible degree of airport expansion.
Of course there should be a new airport to the east of London, where the jobs are needed and the transport infrastructure can mesh - CTRL, new Thames Crossing etc. Having described a potential site (Cliffe) in its 2003 White Paper, the government subsequently funked this choice.
Chris Pocock, Uxbridge, Middx
If the government were really, really, really worried and serious about our carbon emissions and global warming then they would do something about it - each individually, there would be no choice. They are not doing anything at all to change the way they live and govern (less jetting around, turning off lights, etc. there are conference calls available but they don't use them). So my belief is that they know it is all a big political con but they expect us all to swallow it and pay for it. No sorry I am not that stupid!
Vanessa Crichton, London,
If the government doesn't get its eco arse in gear democracy will have had its day. We'll need a green totalitarianism to sort it.
The masses are too dumb to make correct decisions, they pave over their gardens, drive 4x4s, work away with their pointless drone lives and would prefer to live in a desert anyhow.
Local government is corrupt and ineffective. National government is in the payroll of the big business and the oligarchs half of whom were probably booted out of Russia.
i wish we had a Putin of our own who knew the right thing to do to save us.
Lets face it Nasa had the best brains and unlimited cash and still didn't listen to advice to avoid disaster neither will the west.
To do our bit we must plant trees like crazy as a carbon sink, try not to travel, work from home and stop being consumeristic and materialistic. Don't buy what you don't need, stuff the economy and economic growth. Either that or buy the grave plots where you are going to bury your grandchildren.
Keith Bentham, Wigan, Lancs
How much of climate change was actually caused be the atomic and similar bomb tests in the 2nd half of the 20th century? and does the launch of a space rocket contribute to it?
david nunn, norwich, england
well put. thank you
Mack, London, UK
Peter Charles - I'm so tired of this suggestion that no one is prepared to stop flying themselves. I did it in 2000 - not one flight since then - and I have no intention of getting on a plane again. I'm not the only one. We're not all waiting to be coerced into doing the right thing.
Steve Brown, Llandeilo,
So the main reason for expansion of Heathrow is leisure travel for UK residents. So why expand Heathrow when most UK residents would not choose a London airport as first choice? And the boom in cheap leisure travel is based almost entirely on the growth of EasyJet, Ryanair etc who do not use Heathrow as it is too expensive. And thr carbon footprint is made even worse when you consider that most of the airport users will have to travel further to get to Heathrow because the flight they want is not out of their preferred airport. The only argument for thisproposal is that it aids growth because a single hub offers more connections and convenience. convenience for whom?
I recommend a survey of UK air travellers to see how many would prefer to fly through Heathrow. I expect 90% would avoid Heathrow like the plague - as I do.
Noah, knutsford, cheshire
All journalists who advocate an end to cheap air travel, should take a 5 year break from flying themselves to set an example.
I have a feeling that would concentrate their minds on the implications of ending such flights.
Peter Charles, London, UK
Hi
You may remember on the 15th October 1987 Mr Fish on the BBC Weather service said "someone just called in to say there is a hurricane on the way, and I can tell you there is not a hurricane coming". On the 16th of October many had felt there was.
Well, according to one forecaster there is a major storm on the way and its due to hit us in the next few days!!
A company called WeatherAction has made this forecast in the last few days and base their weather prediction on the activity of the Sun. Piers Corbyn has said that the current energy from the Sun to the Earth is about the same as October 1987. So will it happen or not, and if it does is he correct in stating that the Sun is the villain of the peace regarding Climate Change and not man. Its an interesting situation as how can you predict the weather using the Suns energy when the Suns energy is regarded as being a small contributor to Climate Change.
PinYourEarsBack, London, United Kingdom
I intend to minimise my carbon footprint by flying out of the UK, passing through one of its packed airports and its Politically Correct and politically motivated security checks - I am white, male and middle aged and absolutely no terrorist threat to anyone - and just not come back here except when I absolutely have to.
ian, nottingham,
Sure, global warming is happening but it will happen whether or not the carbon footprint is reduced or even eliminated. Whilst not liking being referred to as a "flat earth" proponent, I do believe that the current hysteria thought up by politicians and some scientists many of whom admit that it is not an exact science, no one has been able or even seemed to have tried to explain why the surface of Mars, for example, is warming up at the same rate as the earth's. But I do agree with reducing CO2 emissions and the sooner we all build nuclear power stations and make liquid hydrogen to move the nations, the better. Just think, a water / hydrogen generator the size of a refrigerator in your home garage. No more filling up at the service station. No more toxic emissions for vehicle exhausts.
B J Deller, Marbella, Spain
Ruth Kelly's travel expenses for 2006/07 - Car £425. Rail £775. Air £4,869. No wonder she's so keen.
Ian Cobley, London,
This is an absolutely excellent anaylsis of this government's incoherent approach to tackling climate change. On Monday Brown is making a speech on Climate and by Thursday he's pushing for a massive growth in aviation emissions. He needs to get real. Thank you Simon.
Joss Garman, London,
Thank you Simon, well written.
Living in Windsor is already a nightmare. Adding more aircraft noise to the already serious anti social behaviour and noise resulting from the "night economy" of late night and early hour drinking in clubs and pubs makes our life here a missery.
Members of this governement should be required to live under such conditions before passing legislation which makes things even worse for others.
Douglas Sulley, Windsor, Berkshire
This is the same Ruth Kelly who has decided not to intervene in a decision that would render a perfectly usable rail tunnel (today) unusable in the future on the grounds that "it is not current government policy to reopen disused railway lines". So in her eyes that makes it okay for National Grid to use the Woodhead tunnel for their cables even though that prevents any future use of the tunnel for rail purposes, despite there separte companies wanting to do just that in the last five years. A transpennine railway would be wonderful, linking Sheffield to Manchester and connecting many towns along the route, opening up opportunities for workers and reducing CO2. But it's okay for this possibility be written off forever.
The only thing this Government seems to do competently and consistently is make very bad shortsighted decisions. Where's the leadership? Why does BAA have more influence over the Government over than the electorate? Democracy? What a depressing joke.
Emma, Manchester, UK
So government doen't hire consultants and advisors with truly independent opinions - what's new?
Any government that believes Saddam Hussein had chemical rockets on 45 minutes notice that could reach Cyprus is at the mercy of anyone who can spin a good yarn. As for carbon-trading, even if the carbon-neutrality sums do add up the scheme totally ignores the time lag between instant production from a jet exhaust and gradual consumption by a tree that will probably be felled by illegal loggers before it does it job anyway.
KR, Stockport,
A few days ago you argued in the Guardian that "the suppression of geography has been a conspiracy against the true education of the human mind, against scepticism and the exercise of the imagination." I'm surprised, therefore, that you have embraced so unquestioningly the arguments of the Small Carbon lobby. For as shining an example as there can possibly be of a conspiracy against scepticism and the exercise of the imagination you have to look no further than the treatment by Small Carbon of anyone who ventures to question the intellectual basis of their arguments.
I'm as dubious as you are about the real benefit to humanity of the drive to ever-increasing consumption, but the discussion is trivialised, I feel, by the presupposition that the link to climate change is of such importance that all other considerations are immaterial. Maybe a more inquisitorial, less adversarial approach would help discussion to develop beyond just the protagonists' sexiest arguments?
Simon Stephenson, Windermere, UK
A real (300km/h French style) high speed rail network for the country and linking existing airports to efficient and cheap public transport systems into the cities they serve, would reduce the requirement for air travel of less than 2 hours (The French TGVs have already resulted in air routes from Paris to Lllle, Strasbourg, Brussels, Le Mans, Tours.... the list goes on, to be axed), and would stop people driving to airports.
I live in a small village near Grasse: 30kms fom Nice Airport. When I do fly, I take the bus to the airport that passes through my small village: The bus is subsidised by the region and the fourty minute trip costs just €1.30.
The last time that I needed to go to Paris I took the bus to Grasse where a local train took me to Cannes from where I took the TGV to Paris.. over 1000kms away, but it was still cheaper than flying on EasyJet and a darn sight more comfortable.
QED
But you are right the government in England seems to lack vision.
Peter Goddard, Le Rouret, France, EU
She should have looked at the price of oil before she made the decision. Production constraints mean that there is almost no chance of the price going down and every chance it will continue to rise. This will at some point start to reduce air travel and make these projects look like very expensive white elephants, basically she hasn't got a clue.
RH, Lund, Sweden
Near-useless wind turbines? Try telling that to Denmark, which manages to get over 20% of its power from them....
Alastair Stevens, Gloucester, UK
If the world is heating up it has nothing to do with man. The world has constantly changed without our help.Who gets the carbon tax anway? Your God? How long can cheap air travel be sustained in a world of deminishing oil ?. Have no fear, this government wont survive the winter and the next lot wont have the bottle. My concern is not with the people who paid the market price to live near an airport but with myself and other millionsof motorists sitting in gridlock for five years as the corrupt contractors stretch out the work with their invisible workforce.
kenny, hove, uk
Unreal decision!! Here was a golden opportunity to build a High Tech Airport for the future like many other countries throughout the world have done and instead the UK Government chose to blight the lives of perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 people all around the London and Windsor areas. Equally, of course, make Heathrow even more unpopular as a transit or dep/arr airport for millions of passengers primarily business.
Like Terminal 5, an accident perhaps waiting to happen! I mean to say building a vast terminal virtually at the threshold and smack in the middle of the existing two runways is not terribly intelligent.
A new high tech airport for the future, built on reclaimed land, with new high tech infrastructure, logistics and transit system would have been a real benefit for the country. Instead, as is usual, short term gain, short term planning and a cheap job! T5 quite the same of course.
This is the biggest ever mistake UK Parliment has made and will cost the country billions!
Mel, Interlaken, Switzerland
Thanks to years of appalling customer service, high prices and endless queues, Heathrow has become the more detested and tiresome airport in Europe. BAA have done their bit for the environment, as many people now avoid it. The solution for LHR is to make it smaller, and allow only short-haul flights to take people to modern hassle-free airports such as Amsterdam, Zurich and Vienna where people can make their connections, not lose their baggage and enable those who wish to calm their nerves with a cigarette in the permitted cafes and smoking rooms.
Liam, Belgrade, Serbia
This government is in denial of ever aspect of it's complete failure to do what governments are supposed to do which is govern. What a bunch of clowns they are at last being shown to really be. I wonder how much more havoc they will pour onto us before the public get so fed up and boot them out so that we can start putting right the mess these fools have created?
D Case, Newquay,
We need an end to dithering and paralysis... far too much time has been wasted already. Either substantially expand LHR or build a (bigger) alternative. From CO2 point of view it is drop in the ocean compared to what is happening with airport expansion in China.
Richard, London,
Ruth Kelly has been bamboozled into believeing that aviation should help DRIVE the economy, which is an inefficient strategy when one looks at the cost in terms of proportional land-take, the environment and basic human rights of the good people of Sipson etc. Aviation IS vital to the economy, but in a SUPPORT function, facilitating business travel to and from the UK, and inbound tourism. Anything else - outbound tourism, expensive retail outlets, transiting passengers, car parking - is gravy for BAA and the airlines. Is it really heresy to wonder whether a smaller, more efficient Heathrow, requiring less land, fewer flights, and less road-traffic would be preferable to the Hydra currently in our midst? The possibility should at least be investigated and debated, and if Ruth Kelly were an independent, insightful, imaginaitve, worthy Transport Secretary, she would agree.
Rachel Webb, near Aylesbury, Bucks, UK
When is civil aviation going to pay fuel taxes and congestion charges? It is in effect still heavily subsidised - the main single reason for its (quite unsustainable) expansion.
Dave, Wrexham,
A real (300km/h French style) high speed rail network for the country and linking existing airports to efficient and cheap public transport systems into the cities they serve, would reduce the requirement for air travel of less than 2 hours (The French TGVs have already resulted in air routes from Paris to Lllle, Strasbourg, Brussels, Le Mans, Tours.... the list goes on, to be axed), and would stop people driving to airports.
I live in a small village near Grasse: 30kms from Nice Airport. When I do fly, I take the bus to the airport that passes through my small village: The bus is subsidised by the region and the forty minute trip costs just €1.30.
The last time that I needed to go to Paris I took the bus to Grasse where a local train took me to Cannes from where I took the TGV to Paris.. over 1000kms away, but it was still cheaper than flying on EasyJet and a darn sight more comfortable.
QED
But you are right the government in England seems to lack vision.
Peter Goddard, Le Rouret, France, EU
The government treats projections of increasing numbers of air travellers as gospel - acknowledging neither their own ability to curtail unnecessary journeys or the possibility that people may finally start to wake up and take a little responsibility for climate change. An increase in passenger numbers is not desirable. We need to move to a culture of fewer, longer trips abroad which will be better for everyone and the planet.
As for how far we can influence climate change, the arguments that human emissions don't warm the planet are unscientific nonsense, but it is possible we've done so much damage that it's already too late. If so we're all screwed anyway. But for the sake of our descendents we need to be optimistic and assume that responsible behaviour may yet leave us with a habitable planet in a hundred years' time. Somehow that seems a little more important than feeding peoples' desires for increasing numbers of short leisure trips abroad.
Dr Richard Milne, edinburgh,
I am afraid we build cowardice into our politicians and they react now only to that which can harm them.This rationale of the political used to be mitigated by leaders and those properly called statesmen.
The lesser people we now employ see no reason to follow any path that might curtail their hold on a career.Once you have abandond the reason for your entering public life ( such as the minor matter of socialism for many now in office) there only remains survival.
While the electorate have no appitite for a response to carbon emmisions those in power today will follow rather than lead.
If we are to survive our use of fossil fuels it will be a close run thing.
robert everitt, wolverhampton,
Of course, Simon Jenkins Is right. What he fails additionally to mention is the interminable overseas junketing by officials of all kinds, paid for out of the public purse. Overseas travel should be viewed as the last option not the first.
David Chandler, Bromley, England
Jenkins might have mentioned the enormous subsidies from taxpayers this industry enjoys and how its the businesses abroard that make the money . He's right that the majority of passenger traffic ranges from sun seekers to booze and bonking charters to Budepest or wherever. Brown's government likes to talk green but they know that most voters couldn't give a toss and its carbon business as usual. This brings us to St Pancras. Yes its beautiful to look but at £800 million and the rest to save 20 mins. while light rail schemes around the country are starved of money. Hardly sustainable!
Ray Cobbett, Emsworth, Hants,
Big business has got away with murder under this government. New Labour has got it all wrong on what it means to be business friendly. It isn't just big carbon that calling the shots. Just think of all the other big businesses the Tescos, that call the shots and pull the strings of the puppets that we now elect.
SP, solihull, UK
Simon, you are devilishly insincere in your damnation; I fear you are just a nimby in disguise! Yes the case is transparently thin,
but you seem to imply that you would support more capacity if only it were elsewhere than Heathrow! If the RAF does more greenhouse damage in a day than Wales wind turbines save in a year, the only logical solution is to ground the RAF and build more turbines but i know you want the opposite!
mark houghton brown, nelson, new zealand