The Citizen/Echo's recent article on "New Air Services" from Staverton confirms the worst fears about the airport expansion, and totally discredits the airports claims that the expansion is simply safety related which will have no environmental impact.Plus the airport have released an extraordinary document that basically denies climate change is man made!! Lastly I finish this post in an appropriate green coloured text with some actions to take.
As Kevin Lister writes: "If the airport's claim that the runway extension is simply safety related is true, then it would imply that the airport has introduced a service that is dangerous to operate as the service is being introduced before the runway has been extended. In this case, the management should be reconsidering their position for putting their customer’s lives in danger. Clearly, no rational manager would knowingly put himself in this position. Their argument about safety being the issue only works because the management want to run additional larger planes that cannot be safely operated from the existing runway. Running additional larger planes from the airport is service expansion, what ever way you look at it. No sane and rational person could come to any other conclusion."
Why on earth has the airport continually tried to claim that the runway extension is simply safety related - they have tried to ridicule comments by me and others in the press - at least the article does now confirm that a significant increase in plane movements from the airport is the true intention of the runway extension works - and it eliminates any doubt that it is simply safety related. It further demonstrates the complete contempt that the airport and its backers have to the environmental impacts that their proposals will cause.
Mr Filleul from Manx2.com further confirms the position when he states: "the services will compete with Bristol and Birmingham airports." This again is an unbelievable statement as it is completely counter to airport's claims on its own web site where they say "We will never be competing with the major, 24-hour Airports like Bristol and Birmingham," when they were assuaging local concern on the environmental impact.
On top of that the airport has planned increases in helicopter flights and it was reported that Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Ratcliffe said he hoped the new twice-daily service to Jersey would give added focus to the county as a business destination and put pressure on local authorities to release land around the Staverton site for business development.
Major of Gloucester, Councillor Harjit Gill, seems to be convinced by the airports argument that expansion will be good for us, when he says, "taxi drivers will get more jobs and the economy will benefit. I think it is wonderful." It has perhaps not occurred to him that virtually all the roads in the area are already at grid lock for most of the time - let alone issues of climate change even after he witnessed the flooding of his city.
If service growth is allowed we will see the combined effects of additional traffic and aircraft pollution forcing NO2 levels beyond safety limits. The airport could then like other airports in the country become an asthma and respiratory problem hot spot. Unlike the airport’s recent claims that house prices in the area would rise, it is more likely that they would collapse as the quality of the local environment is destroyed by extra traffic, new businesses, noise and pollution - indeed I would be interested if there was a single case the airport could site where an airport expansion has led to a rise in house prices!!
Sadly as we've seen already the Echo has been particularly poor at getting the facts out about this - and seem reluctant to print all but a few letters of opposition - see previous post on Staverton by clicking the 'Label' below.
Climate change is a myth
It is extraordinary the lengths the airport has gone to - the airport recently issued a confidential report to MPs and Councillors claiming global warming is a myth. The report was leaked to some of us. Even George Bush and Exxon/Mobil have now accepted global warming is the most serious threat to us, Staverton Airport must be the last organisation in the world still seriously trying to dismiss the science!!!
David Drew MP has joined the Lid Dem MP for Cheltenham to come out against Staverton airport's expansion. Mayor of Cheltenham, John Rawson, on seeing the report by the airport has also said he can be quoted saying: “I am utterly shocked that the Airport should be promoting the idea that climate change is a hoax and that the world's scientists and governments are systematically pulling the wool over people's eyes. This is lunatic stuff, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves. The fact is that the world's most eminent scientists are overwhelmingly convinced that human behaviour is contributing to climate change. It won't do the Airport any good to associate itself with mad conspiracy theories."
Richard Conibere, of Cheltenham Friends of the Earth, pointed out that the Airport's report contradicts the statement on their web site where they claim to be concerned about global warming. Indeed if they are prepared to fudge the truth about something as important as this, then should we believe them on anything else? As Richard said: "From the airports own figures it would seem they need many more planes using the airport than they have publicly claimed to make the investment pay off.”
It is surely clear that the airport should start taking a more mature approach to understanding the environmental impacts of their proposals. We are all being told that we must reduce our emissions. It is galling to see others ignoring the science and abusing their positions.
Lib Dem contradictions
At present too many councillors from all three parties appear to be behind the airport expansion - below is a campaigner's letter to a Lib Dem councillor who supports airport expansions - the Lib Dem policy is to oppose expansions but a brief wider look shows Lib Dems supporting airport expansions across the country in Exeter, Glasgow, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool. They have also voted against tough noise limitation laws, argued that air travel should be made "more affordable" (presumably to encourage people to fly), and their fourth biggest donor in recent years has been the British Airports Authority. Anyhow they are perhaps marginally better than the other two who support airport expansions - anyhow here's that letter which covers some useful points:
Thank you for your reply and the time that you have put in to making your argument, however I would suggest that it is worth more fully reconsidering some of the points that you have made, and I trust that you will bear with me whilst I try and answer them. I apologise in advance for the length of the reply.
You have said that that the information I have provided is well known to you. I therefore trust that you also appreciate the ultimate and over riding urgency of taking action. No matter how optimistically we hope, global warming will not go away and it is absolutely certain to become an overwhelming problem in the very near future. The problem is so immense that it will not be resolved by simply putting up a few windmills and hoping for the best.
The government, and even Staverton Airport, have said we need to take action at local, national and international levels. First consider each of these levels. Effective action at an international level that results in CO2 and other greenhouse gas reductions has been none existent. As you have pointed out China, India and the USA have not signed the Kyoto Protocol and have little intention of doing so. In fact China’s position is that they are concerned about global warming, but do not intend to reduce emissions. Even those countries that have signed the Kyoto agreement have signed targets that are either easy to achieve or require no actual cuts in CO2 emissions to be made. At a national level, little progress is being made. Alternative solutions for energy supply such as wind power are consistently being proven to be ineffective in terms of consistently meeting the energy demands of a energy hungry country with 60 million people, and other ideas such as bio fuels are actually far worse for the environment than burning fossil fuels. That leaves us with no option but to take robust action at the local level, and this means taking action in all areas. It ultimately means completely changing our expectations and life style. Whilst persuading people to cut down on car journies and reduce heating will help, it will be far too small to be effective, and will do nothing more than provide false hope.
It is precisely because action in all other areas is failing that makes the necessity for taking local action imperative. Solving global warming will not come about by us all determining that we should have an equal slice of CO2 emissions as there is not enough time to reach such a complicated agreement. Global warming will only be resolved by the masses recognising that the earth is saturated with CO2 and nearing the point of catastrophic climate change and then taking urgent action to reduce our emissions and avoid creating any new emissions in all areas.
I accept your point that vehicle emissions and power emissions are large, but at least their rate of increase is relatively steady. Aviation by contrast is the most rapidly growing source of emissions. It makes absolutely no sense that we allow something as dangerous to the environment as this to expand when we actually need everything else to contract. By allowing Staverton Airport to expand, it sends out the loud and clear message that the environment is actually not important. If you allow the airport to expand, you will certainly face the car owners arguing that there is no point in them cutting back their journeys if you do not have the courage to oppose a relatively small airport expansion.
It is also worth taking a lesson from road transport. We now know the environmental damage from road traffic is enormous and potentially catastrophic, yet we are virtually powerless to do anything to stop it, so addicted have we become as a society to it. It is clear from the experience of the road, that it is easier to stop a bad thing from starting than to stop a bad thing from continuing. Staverton Airport is no different. Once new services start, it would be virtually impossible to stop them as various vested interests would argue that their businesses or life styles had become dependent on the new services, or contractual obligations prevents them from being stopped.
Further more, the total green house effect from aircraft is considerably more that the CO2 emissions alone. The exhaust from planes is a cocktail of gases; in particular there are large amounts of NO2. As well as this being a dangerous gas at ground level that causes asthma and respiratory ailments around airports, it is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas which is in the region of 300 times more potent that CO2 alone. The high altitude that this is emitted at further increases the global warming impact. The result is that the additional radiative forcing increases the global warming impact of aviation by a factor of 4 to 6 over the actual CO2 emissions alone.
When evaluating total CO2 emissions from planes, you also need to consider that international travel is not counted, despite this being the largest source of emissions. With international emissions counted, aviation accounts for 6% of the UK’s total emissions. With the radiative forcing, this suggests that aviation is potentially contributing about 20% of our total global warming impact. This is not insignificant.
I further believe that your point about Britain’s contribution to the world CO2 emissions being negligible also needs further consideration. Firstly, Britain is the 7th biggest contributor of CO2 emissions in the world. One of the reasons why our emissions have been able to stay stable recently is that we have simply exported much heavy industry abroad to countries such as China. Even still, on a per capita basis, China’s emissions are still only 30% of ours and India’s are 10%. It therefore completely destroys our position in trying to persuade these countries to make cuts in their emissions when we are not prepared to stop even a relatively small airport.
Bring the debate fully home to Staverton. We have calculated that approximately 1.5 million trees would be required to absorb the CO2 from the new services outlined in their business plan. For Staverton to make their investment viable, they would need many more services than publicly admitted, thus many more trees would be required than my estimate. So whilst Staverton, may be small in relation to Heathrow, it is only small because the other airports are so large. Trying to argue that it is acceptable to expand Staverton because it is smaller is akin to arguing that it is okay to rob the corner shop because it is smaller than the Great Train Robbery.
Given your initial point of your deep interest in environmental matters, and hence I would suppose your recognition of the risk that we face, you must appreciate that the idea of supporting an airport expansion is not logical. You must recognise that if we were to actually build the airport it is likely to become a white elephant very soon as the economic impacts of climate change will bite and reduce any utility for an airport. From your interest in environemental matters you must be aware that we face the risk of world temperatures rises being in excess of 4 deg C. At this point, the few survivors on the planet would not be interested in flying off for holiday weekends. The recent falls in the stock market are the first global warming economic impacts, as poor weather around the world and demand for bio fuels has pushed basic food prices up, with corresponding impacts in inflation and interest rates. This is a situation that it only going to become much worse, and potentially very quickly. Gloucester tax payers will simply be left trying to support a financial liability at the time when they are least able to do so.
I note with interest that you are in the Liberal Democrats. I had been highly impressed with their public position on opposing all airport expansions. Ultimately stopping airport’s and other instruments of ecomomic development are painful decisions, but often the correct decisions are the most difficult to make and not making them will be far worse in the long run.
You must finally recognise that many of the flights from the airport will be made for ultimately frivolous reasons, such as holidays and weekend’s away. As you may be aware, Staverton see business jets as being one of their main growth areas following the expansion. However, European Air Traffic data shows that amongst the top 20 destinations for business jets are Cannes, Nice and Mallorca. For those of us who are concerned parents with children who are trying to make reductions in our emissions we find it galling that a few elitist people are prepared to completely ignore the science and negate any reductions in CO2 that thousands of us will make.
Staverton airport’s publicly owned status offers a unique position where the council, as the representatives of the people, can take a real lead on this issue and put the environement above short term profit motives. You have the opportunity to stop this development and potentially form a coalition of other willing organisations that would be prepared to make cut backs in their output to safe guard the future. I would offer this as a vision of what you can achieve rather than contributing to the biggest disaster that mankind will see. The alternative is that your hope"that the major international polluters act in unison before the debate becomes irrelevant" will simply remain an unfulfilled hope unless people at the local level are prepared to take leadership positions where they can.
What actions can I take??
1. Write to Cheltenham councillors.
As one of the two joint owners of the airport, Cheltenham Borough Council is considering whether to support the airports expansion plans. A working group has been set up by the "Economy and Business Improvement Overview and Scrutiny" committee to examine the airport's business plan and make a recommendation to the Council Cabinet who will ultimately make the decision.
The working group consists of the following councillors:
Steve Jordan (chair) cllr.steve.jordan@cheltenham.gov.uk
Les Godwin cllr.les.godwin@cheltenham.gov.uk
Jacky Fletcher cllr.jacky.fletcher@cheltenham.gov.uk
The working group can be contacted by email or at the council offices: Municipal Offices, Promenade, Cheltenham Glos. GL50 9SA. Please consider writing to them and letting them know what you think about the proposed expansion.
2. Planning applications.
The planning applications submitted by the airport have still not been considered by the Tewkesbury Borough Council planning committee. Many of us have already put in objections. We now expect the four planning applications made by the airport to be considered by the Tewkesbury Borough Council planning committee at their meeting on September 18th 2007. Make your views known. More details from CASE (Concerned residents Against Staverton Expansion) at: www.case-online.org.uk
3. Write to your MP or local councillor.
See here Kevin Lister's letter to Cllr Gill with 5 things he needs to know about climate change. Meanwhile I wrote a letter to him based on previous letters to the press outlining some of the reasons why the airport should not expand (see here and here).
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