Staverton airport hopes to expand

News that Staverton airport near Gloucester is applying for planning permission prompted me to another letter to David Drew MP (most of which is attached below). Amazingly all three main parties support this expansion and daily there is edidence that this Government doesn't understand climate change - today for example The Telegraph has a bit about how the climate change bill has been downgraded.

Photo: me outside Staverton last year

I am sure opposition will be strong - last July we had a demonstration outside the airport and since then I've written many letters to the press on this issue (put Staverton into search facility on Glos Green party website). I am hoping that David Drew will now clearly oppose this expansion.

Thanks for your recent reply re airport expansions. I write again though to seek your opposition to the current airport expansions.

In the region Bristol airport is currently being considered and Staverton airport now has planning applications out. Staverton is clearly much smaller: the improvements there were said to be about improving safety but now that the 5 year plan has been released to the public for the first time I am told it contains clear references to expected larger business aircraft. I have to say if this is true then this is a clear example of misinformation by the airport who have repeatedly publicly stated that the measures proposed are only about safety. They have also dismissed my comments publicly about expected increased use.

Indeed there has been much misinformation put out by the aviation industry: Ken Livingstone recently made a dramatic u-turn on airport expansions and said he would rule out any expansion in the South-east, arguing that the aviation industry had told him "a pack of lies" about the economic benefits of expansion. The likelihood of rising oil prices is not even considered let alone the possibility we have reached a point of Peak oil.

There has also been much misinformation regarding the impact on climate change and a reluctance to take on the industry. Environment Minister Ian Pearson, who has a collective responsibility for this massive expansion in aviation, even said last month that the Government is powerless to face down airline lobbyists!

This is not acceptable. I wont repeat all the facts and figures, Stern or IPCC, as I am sure you are well versed in them and for that matter, all the facts like travelling by train would have meant 17 times fewer CO2 emissions than aviation. I know also that you are deeply concerned by climate change.

I can at last see a change coming. More people have woken up to the importance of stopping airport expansions. There were 3,500 objections to Bristol.

You are probably familiar with the Environmental Audit Committee who wrote: “DfT’s plan for a large expansion of aviation was incompatible with the Government’s very demanding target for 60% carbon reductions by 2050—especially when taking into account the wider global warming contribution of aviation (previously accepted by the Treasury as equivalent to 2.5 times the weight in emissions simply of CO2 ).”

It goes onto say (bold in the report): “sadly, little has changed for the better since EAC’s last report on aviation. Progress on introducing financial mechanisms to reduce the growth in emissions from flying is slow, and both the Government and the industry are as intransigent as ever” and “even under the Government’s own and most optimistic projections, every other sector of the economy would have to cut its share of UK emissions, while that of aviation would be assisted to almost quintuple (to 24% of total UK emissions given a best case scenario).”

Similarly the draft South West Regional Spatial Strategy’s own Sustainability Assessment (SSA) notes airport expansions will increase climate-changing CO2 emissions in the region. The SSA concludes, if expansions do go ahead, “all other gains in CO2 emissions will be cancelled out by growth in air traffic alone.”

Why should other businesses have to cut emissions even harder to allow expansion of airtravel?

Expanding airports means increasing air travel. In the light of climate change and the most serious threat it presents, a more radical approach is the only acceptable strategy.

Many measures have been proposed in addition to stopping airport expansions like banning virtually all flights under 500km - in many cases fast trains can reach destinations in times that are not much longer when check-in times etc are included.

I hope you will be able to confirm your opposition to airports expanding. All the best - Philip

Philip Booth