BAA plans to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport could mean an extra 500 flights per day over London. The government now admits that a third runway would mean over 700,000 flights using the airport per year. Overall, the number of UK air passengers is expected to rise from 113 million now to 300 million per year by 2030.
Yet polls reveal that only 18% of people back the expansion plans. 62% back a reduction in short-haul flights from Heathrow and 70% of people say that government should take the lead in tackling climate change. The report, Aviation and Climate Change: Public Opinion and the Scope for Action, by Woodnewton Associates, found a majority of people are willing to change their own behaviour to tackle climate change but expect the Government to take the lead.
The Government has already backed the plans for both a third runway and a sixth terminal. However,the government’s consultation documents – totalling hundreds of pages – did not provide an estimate of the impact on CO2 emissions. In his report, Chris Goodall has offered a tentative figure of about 16m tonnes as the potential maximum impact of the proposed expansion. After multiplying by 2.7 to account for the other pollutants created by aviation, the increase takes the total UK emissions from aviation up to 144m tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
In the same week that the consultation paper was published, Gordon Brown made a statement saying that total UK emmissions from all sources may need to fall to no more than 155m tonnes by 2050.
The disjunction between government policies on aviation and climate change is startling.
